THE 



CHRISTIAN YEAR, 



BY 



/ 



EDWARD T. HORN, 

Pastor of Christ Church, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. 




PHILADELPHIA: 

LUTHERAN BOOK STORE,. 117 NORTH SIXTH STREET. 

1876. 






d< 



•J? 



(Copyright, 1876.) 



The Library 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Page. 

Introduction 9 

I. The Origin of the Church (or Christian) Year 9 

1. The Influence of Jewish Customs 10 

2. The Progress of Christian Life 16 

3. Heathen Customs < 19 

4. Times of the Year and Local Customs 21 

5. Historical Table : The Date and Development of the Prin- 

cipal Feasts, etc 24 

II. The Christian Year as a whole, and different 

Conceptions of it , 30 

1. The Lections in the Churches 30 

Table of the Pericopes in the Greek, Armenian, Roman, 

Lutheran and Anglican Church 31 

2. The Greek Church 36 

3. The Western Church 40 

A. The Roman Church 41 

Certain Days 42 

B. The Evangelical or Lutheran Church. 

(1.) Principle of 51 

(2.) Certain Days and Customs 57 

C The Anglican Church 77 

III. The Advantages which some find in this pecul- 

iar Division of Time S2 



PEEFACE. 



To claim originality for this Essay, would be to deny its 
value. By the nature of the case, it cannot be complete. Its 
statements, however, are based on good authority. There is no 
lack of material ; my difficulty lay in the selection and arrange- 
ment. I trust the principle I obeyed will commend itself to the 
reader. 

The origin and history of the Pericopes is intimately con- 
nected with our subject, but would require a separate discussion ; 
therefore I have not touched upon it. 

The attention given to the " Lutheran " Church Year may 
appear to some disproportionate. It is not my prime object to 
exhibit the peculiarities of the various Christian communions, 
but to present the Church Year as a whole, to show what it has 
been, what it is, and what it may become. I have not used 
arguments, but have simply stated facts. It was, therefore, im- 
portant to fix the Protestant principle in respect of it, and the 
usage in those ages when Protestantism was Evangelical and 
positive ; this led me to the early history of the Church of the 
Keformation, but I have not passed over later changes. Besides, 
these details have hitherto been shut from many in the German 
tongue, and I serve all students of Ecclesiology by translating 
and condensing them. 

I have also hoped to do service to my Church. The doctrine 
of her Confessions I believe to be the very, and, so far as they 
go, the only, Word of God. An historical churchliness has been 
revived among us. From the establishment of a Lutheran 

1* 



6 PREFACE. 

Church in America we expect the regeneration of Church and 
country. This will require not merely a study of the doctrines 
of the Reformers and their successors, but a thorough acquaint- 
ance with the church life they produced, or suggested as an 
ideal. I am convinced that we cannot learn this from the Lu- 
theran ChurclT of the present. The whole Christian Church 
falls below the ideal ; but the Lutheran is pre-eminently the 
Church of a grand, unimpeachable, and yet unrealized, ideal. 
The Lutheran Church Year in Germany, with its Liturgy and 
usages, has been hindered by wars, maimed by statecraft, and 
deformed by unLutheran influences ; and in this country, until 
lately, was hardly the shadow of itself. The Church Book is 
the announcement and promise of the ideal of Lutheranism in 
America. Perhaps this essay may serve to illustrate it. May 
God raise up a wiser hand to really begin and complete this 
work. If not, I can propose to myself no more fruitful ambi- 
tion. 

I subjoin a list of books used in the preparation of the essay. 
All the statements of the first two chapters are taken from them, 
though they are quoted in foot-notes only in those cases in which 
I thought my readers might have a special desire to know the 
authorities. 

EDWARD T. HOEN. 

Codex Liturgicus. Herm. Adalb. Daniel. 4 vols. 

Die Urspriingliche Gottesdienstordnung der Deutschen Kirchen 
Lutherischen Behenntnisses. Dr. Th. Kliefoth. 

Liturgische Abhandlungen. Einsegnung der Ehe. By same 
Author. 

Concordia. The Booh of Concord. 

The Booh of Common Prayer. 

Breviarium Romanum. 

Die Chrisiliche Cultus. Dr. H. Alt. 2 vols. 



PKEFACE. ( 

Procter on the Book of Common Prayer. 

The Liturgy and Ritual. Rev. W. Trollope. 

The Ritual Reason Why. Charles Walker. 

Examen Concilii Tridentini. Martin Chemnitz. 

Altarschmuck. Moritz Meurer. 

Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte. Dr. J. C. L. Gieseler. 

Bingham's Antiquities of the Christian Church. 

Essays on Ecclesiology. Dr. John Mason Neale. 

Die Evangelischen Perikopen des Kirchenjahres. A. Nebe, D.D. 



THE 



CHRISTIAN YEAR 



In studying the Church Year, as a distinct division 
of time clung to by the majority of those Christians 
who hold Christianity to be an historical unit, it will 
be convenient to look at I. The origin of the 
Church Year, or the manner in which such a di- 
vision of time came into use; II. The Church 
Year as a whole and the different conceptions of 
it ; and III. The Advantages which some find in 
that peculiar division of time. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH (OR CHRISTIAN) YEAR. 

We are sure to entirely misconceive the state of 
the Apostolic Church, if we believe that the Apostles 
gave to every congregation, as soon as it was gath- 
ered, a complete form of government and system 
of worship. There was not time for that ; and 
Churches in different places, under the influence of 

9 



10 THE CHRISTI N YEAR. 

the different national genius of their members, ap- 
plied the principles the Apostles gave them differ- 
ently. It needed the controversies of later years to 
bring the Church to substantial unity in the ex- 
pression of doctrinal views and Christian worship, 
although much seems to have been learned from the 
practice of the Apostles. 

If the whole system of outward Christian life was 
not direct and minute Revelation (as the Hebrew 
Law had been), Christian organizers must have been 
compelled to use the civilization, and, to some extent, 
the customs, of their time, for the expression of 
Christian truth and life. The early Christians were 
not more highly cultivated than their Heathen and 
Jewish cotemporaries ; some w r ere much less cul- 
tivated ; and, therefore, they could not go beyond 
them, except when led by the Spirit of God. That 
they were guided to forms so pure, so satisfactory, 
and so enduring, is proof that He was with them. 

The division of time which came into use among 
them, they came upon, as upon all other forms, grad- 
ually. In the formation of the Christian Year, the 
Church was influenced : 1. By Jewish Customs ; 2. 
By the Progress of Christian Life ; 3. By Heathen 
Customs ; and 4. By the Seasons of the Natural 
Year and Local Customs. 

1. The Influence of Jewish Customs. 

The earliest Christians were Jews, and kept the 
Jewish Sabbath. But they met for worship every 
day of the week. Sunday, the first day, was a fre- 



JEWISH FEASTS. 11 

quently recurring feast of the Resurrection and com- 
memoration of the birthday of the Church on Pente- 
cost. Friday took a solemn cast as the day of our 
Lord's Last Supper, His parting words, His agony, 
His arrest, mock trial, and crucifixion.* On Wed- 
nesday, they remembered Judas' betrayal of his 
Master. Thus, gradually, every week became a 
group of Christian festivals. Before long, Sunday 
took the place of the Sabbath as the great day of the 
week, having, it is supposed, the sanction of Apos- 
tolic practice. f It was always a festival. On that 
day, they stood in prayer in token of their gladness. 
In the Greek Church, every Sunday retains its cha- 
racter as a feast of the Resurrection . 

The early Christians of Jewish origin did not at 
once break from their national worship ; but, besides 
the habit which would bring them to Jerusalem at the 
Passover, the Passover and the Feast of Weeks, or 
Pentecost, had got new meaning. From the Friday 
of the Passover they fasted — even over the Great 
Sabbath — until Easter. Forty days after Easter was, 
of course, Ascension Day, and ten days later, Pente- 
cost. The two Jewish feasts naturally became Chris- 
tian festivals. "As early as the second century/' 
says Dr. Schaff, "we find them universally and 
without opposition observed, and this gives strong 
presumptive evidence of their existence in the Apos- 
tolic age." He collates 1 Cor. 16 : 8, with 1 Cor. 
5 : 7, 8, to prove that Paul refers to this Christian 

* The Jewish days were reckoned from sunset to sunset, 
f SchafF, Apostolic Church, p. 557 /. 



12 T THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

celebration of the Passover. Paul kept Pentecost 
with the Gentile Christians of Ephesus (Acts 20 : 6), 
" spent Easter of the year 58 v/ith the Gentile-Chris- 
tians of Philippic not departing till the feast was 
over; and he then hastened on his journey, and even 
sailed by Ephesus, in order to keep Pentecost in 
Jerusalem." (Acts 18: 21; 20: 6, 16). In the 
later Paschal controversies, which referred to the 
time and not to the propriety of keeping Easter, the 
Ephesian bishops appealed to the authority of the 
Apostle John ; Polycarp of Smyrna asserted in the 
year 160, that he had kept the Passover with John 
at the time for which he was arguing, and that other 
Apostles agreed with him ; while the Roman Church, 
in defense of their view, appealed as confidently " to 
its oldest bishops and to the order of the Apostles, 
Peter and Paul/' These facts establish the antiq- 
uity of the observance of Easter and Pentecost.* 

There were some disputes about the time of Easter, 
upon which the other feasts depend. The Jewish 
and Eastern Churches were accustomed to celebrate 
it at the time of the Jewish Passover, on the 14th 
of Nisan. As, " according to the Jewish reckoning 
of time, the beginning and end of the months coin- 
cided with the Sabbaths/'f the 14th of Nisan re- 
gularly fell on a Friday. But, according to the 
Roman or Western reckoning, the 14th of Nisan did 
not fall on a Friday ; and, as they thought it neces- 
sary to celebrate Easter on a Sunday, strifes arose 
between them and those who clung to the Jewish 
* See Schaff, Apostolic Church, in lot. f Alt., ii. p. 17. 



FASTS. 13 

calendar.* To put an end to these, the Council of 
Nicsea adopted this rule, A. D. 325 : The first 
Sunday after the Spring full moon is to be kept as 
the day of the Resurrection. But, if the full moon 
be on a Sunday, Easter shall be kept one week after. 
Because the mathematical and astronomical sciences 
flourished at Alexandria, its Patriarch was commis- 
sioned to authoritatively notify the Church of the 
time of Easter on the preceding feast of the 
Epiphany. In the time of Leo the Great, the Romans 
set up a reckoning against this, but the Alexandrian 
finally found common acceptance. f 

In addition, Jewish influence is doubtless traceable 
in the use and times of Christian fasts. It was -very 
early the practice to fast from three o'clock on the 
Friday before Easter until Easter. Gradually, differ- 
ent practices arose, some observing a longer, some a 
shorter, fast. Our Lord had fasted forty days; 
Elijah (1 Kings 19 : 8) and Moses (Ex. 24 : 18) had 
fasted forty days; and, doubtless after these ex- 
amples, the fast before Easter took the same length. 
The Roman Church observed a six weeks' fast, to 
which, to complete the number forty, either Gregory 

* Quarto- deciman controversy. 

f " The Pasch, announced on Epiphany, preceded by the pre- 
paration of Quadragesima, was divided into the Pascha Staurosimon, 
(from stauros, the cross), the Great Week, in which the fifth feria 
(Friday), the Parasceve, and the Great Sabbath were specially ob- 
served ; and the Pascha Anastasimon (from Anastasis, Resurrec- 
tion), which ended with the Dominica in Albis (Sunday after 
Easter). After this came Quinquagesima, the fifty days in which 
fell Ascension dap, and which ended on Pentecost." Gieseler, 
Kirchengeschichte, I., 2, 290 f. Bingham, XX. v., 1. 

2 



14 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

the Great (590-604) or Gregory II. (715-731) added 
four days — because the Sundays were festivals. The 
Greek fast begins on Septuagesima Sunday, nine 
weeks before Easter, because the Saturdays as well 
as Sundays of Lent are by her kept as festivals.* It 
is not necessary to give the different rules of fasting 
and abstinence. The preachers taught that these 
times were to be improved by religious exercises. 
Chrysostom, in a sermon on fasts and alms, says that 
they ought to give to the poor, who are the treasury 
of Christ, what they save by abstinence. They were 
exhorted to prayer, to daily presence in church, and 
to works of Christian love and mercy. " It is not 
enough," says Cgesarius of Aries, in a sermon, " to 

* " One may observe/' says Socrates, " how the Ante-Paschal fast 
is differently observed in different churches. The Romans fast three 
weeks before Easter, only the Sabbaths and Lord's days excepted, 
The Illyrians and all Greece and the Alexandrians fast five weeks, 
Others (meaning the Constantinopolitans) fast seven weeks before 
Easter, but only fifteen days by intervals, and yet they also call this 
the Quadragesimal fast. And it is wonderful that while they differ 
so much about the number of days, they should all call it quadra- 
gesimal, and assign different reasons for this appellation. Some also 
abstain from all living creatures ; others eat only fish ; some eat 
fowls also, because, according to Moses, they say, they come from 
water. Others abstain from seeds (or berries) and eggs ; others eat 
dry bread only, and some not so much as that. Some fast till three 
o'clock in the afternoon, and then eat any kind of meat. Since no 
one can show any written rule about this, it is plain that the Apos- 
tles left this matter free to every one's liberty and choice, that no 
one should be compelled to do a good thing out of necessity and 
fear." Bingham, XXI. I. 3. 

" Jerome (ob. 420) already speaks of the forty days' fast as an 
Apostolic tradition ; cf. Ep. 27 (al. 54) ad Marcellam. And yet 
more confidently Pope Leo (ob. 461) declares it to be an Apostolic 
institution. (Serm. 43, de Quadrages. 6). Note in Alt., II. p. 20. 



FASTS. 15 

listen to the reading of the Scriptures in church, but 
either read them in your houses or seek others who 
will read them to you, and listen gladly and devoutly. 
Especially in the forty days' fast let us, as it is 
written, study the Law of the Lord day and night. 
And if any one is so engaged that he cannot do this 
before meal-time, let him spare no pains to read 
something out of the Holy Scriptures even while he 
eats." From such passages it has been concluded 
that there was daily service in the churches, of which 
the reading of the Scriptures formed the principal 
part. Sermons of Chrysostom's show that during 
fasts he preached in Antioch daily. 

The Jews had four national fasts in the year. 
Doubtless in imitation, the Christians sought to have 
four fasts. The four in the Greek Church are, 1. 
The Fast before Easter; 2. The Pentecost Fast, which 
follows Pentecost, because the preceding fifty days 
are festivals. It begins on the Sunday after Pente- 
cost (the Apostles day), and extends to June 29, the 
day of SS. Peter and Paul ; and is therefore called 
The Fast of the Holy Apostles. 3. From the Inven- 
tion of the Cross, Aug. 1, to the death of Mary, Aug. 
15, is the Mother of God's Fast 4. From St. 
Philip's day, Nov. 14, forty days, to Dec. 24, is the 
Winter or Philip Fast 

In the Western Church the Fasts varied in length 
and in time and strictness of observance. Urban II. 
fixed (1095) the Quatuor Tempora, or as the people 
call them, Quatember or Ember days. Accordingly, 
in the weeks which follow Ash AVednesday, Pente- 



16 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

cost, the Exaltation of the Cross, Sept. 14, and 
St. Lucia's day, Dec. 13, Wednesday and Saturday, 
as well as Friday (which is always a fast-day) are 
fast days. 

2. The Progress of Christian Life. 

The Epiphany is called the first of the distinctively 
Christian Festivals. It was first celebrated by the 
Heretic Basilidians as a commemoration of the mys- 
terious union of the Divine and human natures in our 
Lord ; and, as they thought this took place when He 
was thirty years old, at His Baptism ; it was the com- 
memoration of His Baptism also. They may have 
borrowed this from Jewish Christians in Palestine, 
who, according to Neander, celebrated the Baptism 
of our Lord, or from an Egyptian Heathen custom 
of keeping on the 6th of January a feast of the Sun. 

Soon the Church adopted the feast, as the com- 
memoration 1. Of Christ's Baptism; 2. Inasmuch 
as they believed this to have taken place on His 
thirtieth birthday, of His Birth; 3. And conse- 
quently, of the Star and Wise Men ; and 4. Of the 
Marriage in Cana, because it took place the third day 
after His Baptism. All these events were the Reve- 
lation of Godhead in union with Humanity, and 
therefore the feast was called The Epiphany* il In 
the time of Chrysostom it is spoken of as an old and 
leading festival of the Asiatic Church. The earliest 
distinct trace of it in the West is found in Gaul in 
nearly the middle of the fourth century. "f 

"* 7] eTTMpaveia, ra eTupaveia; hopTrj tcjv kirttpavitjv, rd tieocpdvia, 
Festum Epiphaniae, Dies Manifestationis Domini, 
f Palmer, Bk. of Common Prayer, 273. 



PROGRESS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE. 17 

Afterwards the commemoration of the Birth of 
Christ was transferred to Christmas. It is claimed 
by Romish tradition that Pope Julius I. (306-352) 
found in the Imperial archives of the city of Rome 
records of the census Augustus made at the time of 
Christ's birth, and discovered that He was born not 
on the 6th of January, but on December 25. We 
learn from a sermon of Chrysostom that the obser- 
vance of Christmas was about ten years old in Anti- 
och in 386. Although the Greek Church keeps it as 
the birthday of our Lord, it has never taken the rank 
in its kalendar which the Epiphany holds. 

If Christ was born December 25, the feast of His 
Circumcision is to be celebrated January 1 ; of His 
Presentation in the temple and the Purification of 
Mary (called by the Greek Church c H c Ynanavri] 
too xupiov fjfKDv ^IrjGoi) XpiGTou) February 2 ; of the 
Annunciation (called in the Geeek Church the day 
of the Happy Message, or of the Salutation), March 
25; and of the Birth-day of John Baptist, June 24. 

As early as the Third Century it was the Christian 
custom to celebrate the anniversaries of the death of 
those who had been distinguished for piety and fidel- 
ity, especially of the Martyrs and Confessors, by 
assemblies at their graves.* They celebrated their 
birth-days, they said ; " Not that day," says Petrus 
Chrys logus in a sermon, " on which they were born 
into the world and of flesh, but that on which they 

* u These were not at first general festivals like those of our 
Lord, observed over the whole Church, but were chiefly celebrated 
in those particular places where the martyrs suffered or lay buried.'' 
Bingham XX., VII. 4. 

2* 



18 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

were born from earth into Heaven, from labor into rest, 
from temptation into peace, from torture into happi- 
ness not changeable, but real, enduring, and eternal, 
and from the contempt of the world to a crown and 
glory." The Church gave thanks that God had 
kept them faithful unto death, prayed that the same 
grace might be vouchsafed also to the living, and 
partook of the agape. This afterwards became a 
feast or the Communion ; there were prayers for the 
dead, which Augustine rebuked ; and churches were 
built over their graves. Hence the Church had 
many Saints days, among them All Saints' Sunday, 
the Sunday after Pentecost (in the Greek Church), 
All Saints 1 Day, November 1, (Pope Gregory III., 
731-741), the Apostles' days, the days of St. Stephen, 
St. Mark, St. Luke, St. Silas, and St. Timothy, the 
day of the Holy Innocents, and the days of local and 
patron saints. They also kept the anniversaries of 
the Dedication of Churches, of the Installation of 
Bishops {Natales Episcoporum), and of local calami- 
ties and signal deliverances. Afterwards, when the 
search for relics became general, the discovery or 
solemn reception of precious relics gave new festivals 
to particular places. Nor dare we forget the Rogation 
days and other penitential seasons. 

To these must be added the Feasts of Mary, mul- 
tiplied by her w r orshipers, including in addition to 
those which are also feasts of our Lord and have been 
mentioned, her Birth, Sept. 8 (7th-9th Century) ; 
Presentation, Nov. 21 (in the East, 8th, in the West, 
14th Century) ; Espousal, Jan. 23 (since 1546); the 



HEATHEN CUSTOMS. 19 

Immaculate Conception, Dec. 8 (11th Century) ; Vi- 
sitation, July 2, (13th-14th Century) ; Assumption, 
Aug. 15 (582-818). The honours paid to Mary were 
increased by the orthodox zeal against the Mono- 
phy sites. 

To these may be added Corpus Christi day (1264), 
the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, Trinity Sunday, 
the Invention and Exaltation of the Cross, etc., etc. 

In later days have been added the Festival of the 
Reformation, Mission Festivals, Harvest and National 
Thanksgivings, the Commemorations of National 
events (e. g. of the Coronation and Gunpowder Plot 
in England), and the Feasts of the Dead, observed 
in Germany, together with the Roman Day of All 
Souls, Nov. 2d, etc. 

3. Heathen Customs. 

In the early history of the Christian Church, 
whole tribes, or at least large bodies of men, were 
baptized at once, and it could not be expected that 
each man of them would have so clear an apprehen- 
sion of the truth that it would mould all his after- 
life. Many Heathen customs continued, some of 
which have been handed down among the Germanic 
nations to this day. It was, therefore, the wise 
policy of Christian rulers, as the bishops of Rome 
and the early missionaries, to adopt and Christianize 
the customs and feasts which had takenhold on pop- 
ular life, wherever it was possible ; and, although 
the Church may have been harmed somewhat by the 
admixture of false views with its worship, and by the 



20 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

influence of ill-instructed men, it gained much by 
making the cherished usages of people, which were 
identified with their national life, and involved with 
their social order and unconscious superstitions, 
teachers of Christian truth. Kurtz states that Greg- 
ory the Great instructed the Christian missionaries, 
in 601, " To transform the Heathen temples into 
churches, and the Pagan into saints' festivals and 
martyrs' days, that hard minds might be raised gra- 
dually, not violently."* 

Thus we find that January 6th was a feast of the 
Sun, Inventio Osiridis, celebrated by Egyptian 
Heathen, before it became our Epiphany. The 
Heathen Saturnalia (' in remembrance of the Golden 
Age") were celebrated Dec. 17-24; the Sigillaria 
(a Roman feast in which the people made each other 
presents, especially of small images), on Dec. 24 ; 
and the Brumalia .{dies natalis invicti Solis, the Feast 
of the Winter Solstice), on the 25th. This was also 
a notable feast of the return of the Sun among the 
Northern nations. It was not unadvisedly that John 
Baptist's day and Christmas were made to correspond 
with the Summer and Winter solstices. In this change 
of Heathen revelry into Christian joy, there is some- 
thing of that sanctification of common life and deeds 
which Christianity aims to eifect. Candlemas, the 
Purification of Mary, Feb. 2 (when candles having 
been blessed by the Romish priests are carried in 
procession), doubtless has taken the place of the 

* Ut durae mentes gradibus vel passibus non autem saltibus ele- 
ventur. Kurtz, Church History, Transl. Phila. I., p. 221. . 



FIXED DATE FOR EASTER. 21 

Lwpercalia and February lustrations and the pro- 
cessions with lighted torches through the streets of 
Rome, which had been usual at that time. In some 
parts of Germany (Bohemia, Silesia, Lausitz, Misnia, 
Vogtland), Lcetare Sunday, the Fourth in Lent, is 
called the Sunday of the Dead, and of Redemption from 
Idolatry ; and it is the custom for the young people 
to drag about, and finally throw into the water, an 
effigy of an old man, — probably a remnant of an old 
celebration of the death of Winter. 

On the other hand, New Year's day was long a 
fast in the West, in opposition to Heathen excesses. 

These are examples of the influence of Heathen cus- 
toms, which was greater than we can tell at this day. 

4. Times of the Year and Local Customs. 

The times of the year and local peculiarities must 
have modified common life, and, consequently, the 
worship of the people. The Romans began their 
year on the 1st of March. According to the Julian 
era, the Spring Equinox always fell on the 25th of 
that month. Some Jewish teachers held that the 
world had been created in the Spring. It pleased 
men fond of analogies to make the Spring Equinox 
correspond with the anniversary of Creation^ and to 
put upon the same day the Annunciation, the begin- 
ning of the Incarnation, the new creation ; and they 
at first, tried to celebrate the Crucifixion on that day 
also. They would thus have had a fixed time for 
Easter. But the more accurate kalendar of the 
Alexandrians showed that the Equinox fell earlier, 



22 THE CHKISTIAN YEAR. 

and spoiled their scheme. The correspondence be- 
tween John Baptist's words, He must increase but I 
must decrease, and the coincidence of His birthday 
with the Summer, and of Christ's with the Winter 
Solstice, were not unnoticed. 

Feasts were established also at the request of 
rulers, to satisfy or benefit particular localities. 
Sometimes different places celebrated the same feasts 
on different days, as, for instance, the Romans cele- 
brated the Feast of the Chair of Peter on Jan. 18 ; 
but Antioch, which city also claimed to have had 
Peter for its bishop, on Feb. 22. The Romans after- 
wards adopted the latter together with their own, and 
it was a happy substitute for a Heathen feast to the 
manes of the dead, formerly celebrated from Feb. 20 
to the end of the month. 

Influence of this sort can be traced in some of the 
lections which give character to the Sundays of the 
year. Lcetare Sunday falls in the time when the 
husbandman is beginning his labor in Northern 
lands, and when the seed has already begun to sprout 
in the South. Accordingly, the Gospel lesson is 
John G : 1-15.* The 7th Sunday after Trinity 
(Mark 8: 1-9, The Feeding of the Four Thousand), 
falls in a time when fruits are ripening ; the 8th 
(Matt. 7 : 15-23) conveys the lesson, By their fruits 
ye shall know them ; the 9th (Luke 16 ; 1-9) warns 
those who are gathering from their fields and or- 
chards against a worldly wisdom which would defraud 

* This was chosen, because the Sunday falls in the Forty days' 
fast. 



SUNDAYS AFTEK TRINITY. 23 

them of everlasting habitations ; the 10th corresponds 
with the historical date of the Destruction of Jeru- 
salem, August 10; the 14th (Luke 17: 11-19, the 
Ten Lepers) urges to thankfulness at the end of 
harvest; the 15th (Matt. 6 : 24-34) is of God's care of 
birds and lilies; and the 16th (Luke 7: 11-17, the 
Awakening of the son of the Widow of Nain) was 
doubtless meant to comfort the bereaved in this time 
of frequent death.* These are at least happy coin- 
cidences. 
* From Alt, Vol. II. 



5. The Date and Development 



The Easter Fast 

or 
Quadragesima. 



Sunday in the 
Great Week. 



Thursday. 



Good Friday. 



Great Sabbath. 



EASTER. 



Earlier Books 

of 

Apostolic 

Constitutions. 



The Beginning 
of the Church 
Year. Of uncer- 
tain length. 



Quinquagesima . 
The Fifty Days. ' 



Parasceve. 
("The Prepara- 
tion.") 



A Fast. 
Vigil of Easter. 



Irenceus and 
Tertullian. All 
Festivals. Stand 
in prayer. 



Later Books 

of 

Apostolic 

Constitutions. 



All civil business ex- 
cept emancipation of 
slaves, forbidden. 

Daily service and 
communion. Council 
of Lao dice a forbade 
marriages and feasts 
of martyrs in this time. 
In the Great Week 
Courts were closed 
and Emperors set pri- 
soners free. 

Traditio Symbolic 
Chrysostom. 

Redditio Symboli. 
Anniversary of the 
Lord's Supper. Re- 
admission of Peni- 
tents. 

Commanded. In 
Syria, according to 
Chrysostom, worship 
in churches of martyrs 
and cemeteries, be- 
cause Christ was led 
out. 

Fast. (Descent into 
Hell, Epiphanius.) 
Vigil. Baptism. 
Towns lighted. 



Ambrose 

and 

Augustine. 



Augustine held fast- 
ing to be commanded, 
but not when, nor how 
long. Forty days, 
counted from Easter. 
Even abstinence from 
the bath, except on 
Thursdays. Ambrose 
began on Friday before 
Sexagesima. 



Ambrose. 



Lord's Supper. Morn- 
ing and Evening Com- 
munion in some prov- 
inces. Aug. 



Aug. According to 
the Nicene Rule. 



Ang.Qtiadrag. Mise- 
rable life. Quinquag. 
7x7x1. Eternal joys. 



of the Principal Feasts. 



Koman. 500-600. 



No longer the beginning 
of the Church Year. First 
day called Caput. (Leo, 
In itium ) Quadragesima. 
Different lengths. See 
quotation from the histo- 
rian Socrates. 



Passion History. Leo, 
Still Week. 

Institution of Supper. 



No Mass. 



No Mass. 



Thought seemly to deco- 
rate. No sermon in Rome. 



Kneeling no longer pro- 
hibited in the Gallican 
Church. 



600-850. 



Begins Wed. after Quinqua- 
gesima Simday. In Spanish 
Church, a wavering between 
Easter and Christmas, as the 
beginning of the year. 

Bede began the Fast on 
Ash Wednesday ; the Frank- 
ish Church on Invocavit Sun- 
day. Ash Wednesday from 
time of Charlemagne. 



Consecration of Palms in 
the Gallican Church. 

Blessing of oil. 



German name Ostern be- 
longs to this time, Bede 
derives from Eostra, who 
had her festival in this month . 
Rotker Labeo from Urstant, 
Auferstehung ; Resurrection. 
Lections refer to Res. and to 
Baptism. Pascha A?t?toti- 



Bede — Kneeling yet pro- 
hibited. Gospel of John read 
because it tells of the glory 
of the Lord. 

Litania Major. Apr. 25. 

Rogation days, (three pre- 
ceding Asc.) Instituted by 
Bp. Mamertus, of Vienne, 
in Gaul. 



850.— 



Septuagesima, Sexagesima 
and Quinquagesima Sun- 
days. Sundays named from 
Introits at the beginning of 
the Middle Age. From 
Monday after Lcetare, our 
Lord's conflicts with the 
Jews ; from Judica (Passion 
Sunday), His Passion. Ref- 
erence to Catechumenate 
and Public Penitents given 
up. 

Palm Sunday. 

Chrisma. No Hallelujah. 
Bells silent. Altars naked. 



Adoration of the cross. 
Mass of the Pre-sanctifled. 



Benedictio Fontis. 



Three days. 



Litania Major. Apr. 25 





Earlier Books 


Later Books 


Ambrose 




of 

Apostolic 


of 

Apostolic 


and 




Constitutions. 


Constitutions. 


Augustine. 


r 


Teriullian as- 


Chrysostom. Greg. 


Aug. says observed 


Ascension. 




cribes to Aposto- 


Nys. In Syria, as on 


throughout the world. 




lic tradition. 


Good Friday. 








Origen. 










The day not 
positive. 


Chrys. Greg. Nys. 
and Naz. A great 
time for Baptism. 




Pentecost. 






Octave of Pentecost 
— Of all Martyrs in 
the Greek Church. 




Sundays after . 










Pentecost. 










Advent. 
















Apostolic Constt. 
Chrys. Greg. Naz. 


Ambrose. 


Christmas. 






and Nys, 




Jan. i. 






New Year. Fast in 
Greek Church. 


Fast. 


TTnTTtTT A VTTT 




Clemens Alex. 


In Jerusalem and 


The Wise Men.— 


EPIPHANY. 




Birth, as well as 


Egypt as Birth of 


Amb. Baptism of Christ 






Baptism, of our 


Chiist until 5th Cent. 


or Wedding at Cana. 




' 


Lord. 


In the East, His Bap- 
tism ; in West, The 










Wise Men. 








Called by Ter- 


Ap.CC.VIII. Feasts 


Peter and Paul, June 






tullian an imme- 


get Octaves. Apostles' 


29. All Apostles — 6th 






morial custom. 


days. (The Greek 


Cent. John Baptist. 


Days of Martyrs 






Church is more Scrip- 


Maccabees. Holy In- 


and 






tural and historical in 


nocents. St. Stephen. 


Departed Saints ' 


V 




its saints than Rome.) 





26 



Roman. 500-600. 



Monday. 
Tuesday. 



yerome. Leo. Joyful 
season until Epiph. ex- 
cepting Jan. i. 



yerome and Leo. 



St. MichaeVs. Earliest 
trace in a letter of Pope 
Gelasius (492-496) bidding 
a bishop consecrate a 
church to the Archangel 
Michael and St. Martin. 



600-850. 



No proper Masses until 
now. Six after Pentecost, five 
after Peter and Paul's day, 
June 29 ; five after St. Law- 
rence's, two after St. Cy- 
prian s in Theotinchus. 
Advent fast formerly. Length 
varying. Finally four Sun- 
days. Threefold meaning — 
making ready for our Lord's 
coming (1) in the flesh, (2) 
in Word and Spirit, and (3) 
at the end of the world. 
Vigil. 

St. Stephen's. 

St. John's. 

Holy Innocents'. 



Gradual disuse of its fast 
Contra Gentilitatem. 
The Circumcision. 



With Vigil. Wise Men. 
Sundays after Christ's Pro- 
phetical office. 

All days of Apostles and 
of many other saints have 
vigils, when it is fasted. At 
3 o'clock there is a Mass 
without the Gloria in Excel' 
sis and Hallehijah, and in the 
evening the history of their 
martyrdom is read, divided 
into sections, between which 
are Responses and Anti- 
phons. Also Octaves with 
the same Masses. 



850.— 



Trinity Sunday, 1305-1409. 
Sundays after Pentecost. 



Vigil. 

Amalarius ; This time 
(until Septuages.) serves as 
commemoration of those 
who, before all, are to bere- 
garded as the preachers of 
the church. 

These as Christmas days. 

The Circumcision. 

11 Feast of Fools," forbid- 
den, 1444. 



Baptism of our Lord on 
Sunday after New Year. 
The Wise Men. 



27 



Anniversaries of 
Dedications 

of 
Churches. 



I 



Invention of the 
Cross. (Its dis- 
covery by the 
Empress Helena) 
Exaltation of 
the Cross. (Its 
recovery from the 
Persians and re- 
turn by Emperor 
Heraclius, 629.) [ 



Feasts of Mary. 



Fasts. 



28 



Earlier Books 

of 

Apostolic 

Constitutions. 



Later Books 

of 

Apostolic 

Constitutions, 



Sozomen. 



Ambrose 

and 
Augustine. 



First trace — a Homi- 
ly of Proclus of Con- 
stantinople, 430. 



Formerly left to the 
unconstrained resolu- 
tion of each one, now 
commanded by the 
church. 



Annunciation — F es- 
tum Conceptionis Do- 
mini. Aug. — Ambrose 
has none. 



The opinion of the 
necessity of these, and 
their use in winning 
merit before God, gains 
ground; although Aug. 
tried to lead back to 
the Scriptural concep- 
tion of them. 



Roman. 500-600. 


600-850. 


850.— 




Very many saints. 152- 






2000 in the year. 






First trace of All Saints in 


All Souls. Odilo, Abbot 




consecration of Pantheon to 


of Clugny, 998. 




St. Mary and All Martyrs. 






First trace of All Souls in 






an ordinance of Isidore 






(f 636) that in cloisters the 






Sacrament shall be offered 






annually, the day after Pen- 






tecost, for all dead members 






of the convent. 




See Gallican Church. 


In Rome before 701. 




History found in Sulpicius 






Severus. 








Purification. 


Conception, nth Cent. 




Assumption, 7th Cent, in 


Presentation, in East, 8th 




Rome. Nativity, 7th Cent. 


Cent., in West, 14th. Visi- 




in Rome. 


tation, 14th. 

Saturday of every week. 



29 



30 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 



II. 

The Christian Year as a Whole, and Dif- 
ferent Conceptions of it. 

1. 

The Lections in the Churches. 
It does not belong to our purpose to trace the 
history of the lections and pericopes. That would 
require a special and full discussion. But in order 
to present the Church Tear as a whole, there must 
be given a list of the proper lessons for the Sundays 
and chief days in the different Churches. Let it 
suffice to say that there are two recognized principles, 
the Lectio Continua and the Lectio Propria ; accord- 
ing to the former the books of the Bible, their chap- 
ters and verses, are read in their written order ; the 
latter is the selection of portions suitable to particular 
times. From the beginning, proper lessons were se- 
lected for the Great Feasts, such as Easter, Epiphany 
and Christmas, and gradually for the Sundays, this 
work being completed during the Middle Age. 



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C G 
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36 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

2 . THE GREEK CHURCH. 

The Eastern Church is more attached to ancient 
usage than the Western. Although Christmas, 
Epiphany, Ascension and Pentecost are kept, " Eas- 
ter," says Alt, "is the great and, properly consid- 
ered, the only feast time of the Oriental Church Year. 
All the other feasts, even the Epiphany not excepted, 
pass only for intercalations and from the beginning 
have been held to be additions to the original old 
Christian Church Year." It consequently fixes the 
beginning of the Church Year at the beginning 
of its preparatory fast. The year ends with the 
Sundays after Epiphany, which are more or fewer, 
according as Easter falls late or early. The Western 
Church Year, on the contrary, begins with Advent 
Sunday, but a remnant of the old practice is seen in 
the Roman and Anglican use of the same pericopes 
for the last Epiphany Sundays and the last Sundays 
before Advent.* 

For the same reason the influence of the old Chris- 
tian weekly festivals is clearly discernible in the 
structure of the Greek Church Year. As of old 
every Sunday was the commemoration of the resur- 
rection, and Wednesdays and Fridays commemorated 
Christ's betrayal and death, so Wednesdays and Fri- 

* " The observation of Advent, as a season of preparation for 
Christmas, cannot be certainly traced to an earlier date than the 
6th century, at least in the West ; and even then the Eastern and 
Western Churches did not agree on a uniform period for its cele- 
bration. The Nestorians in the East were the first who changed 
the commencement of the Church Year from Easter to Advent, 
and we find this change adopted in Gaul in the 6th Century." 
Proctor on the Book of Common Prayer, p. 268. 



EASTER. 37 

days are yet fast days and every Sunday is a less 
Easter. Although all the Sundays have appropriate 
lections, at matins every Sunday morning one of the 
following Resurrection lections is read in its order : 



I. 


Matt. 28 : 


16-20. 


VI. 


Luke 24 


: 36-47. 


II. 


Mark 16 : 


1-8. 


VII. 


John 20 : 


1-10. 


III. 


Mark 16 : 


9 16. 


VIII. 


John 20: 


11-18. 


IV. 


Luke 24: 


1-9. 


IX. 


John 90 


19-29. 


V. 


Luke 24 : 


13-35. 


X. 


John 21 : 


1-14. 



XL John 21: 15-19. 

As Sunday is the eighth day, so, before Easter, the 
great Sunday of the year, are seven Sundays of pre- 
paration. After Easter the Feast extends through 
seven Sundays to All Saints' Sunday, the eighth. 

If we reckon fifty weeks to their Church Year, and 
take from these the seven of preparation and the fes- 
tal eight, the remaining thirty-five may be divided 
into groups corresponding to the other five days of the 
week and represent the time for instruction and labor. 

From Easter to the Sunday of All Saints (first 
after Pentecost) the Gospel of John is read, and the 
Acts of the Apostles ; from All Saints' Sunday to 
Elevation of the Cross (Sept. 14th) Matthew, Ro- 
mans, and 1st and 2d Corinthians ; from the Eleva- 
tion of the Cross to Quinquagesima, Luke, 2 Corin- 
thians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, 1st and 2d 
Timothy ; from Quinquagesima to Easter (the Great 
Fast), Mark and Hebrews. These lections are 
rarely interrupted by the lectiones propria". The 
General or Catholic Epistles have no place at all in 
this scheme. There is a certain symmetry of arrange- 
4 



38 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

ment. Thus there are six lessons from Romans, 
from 1st Corinthians, and from 2d Corinthians; 
five from JEphesians ; four (and a lectio propria on 
the Sunday of Orthodoxy) from Hebrews ; three from 
Galatians and from Colossians ; two from 1st Timo- 
thy ; and one from 2d Timothy and from Philip- 
pians. The last Sunday before the Great Fast has 
for its Gospel Matt. 25 : 31-46, as a fitting close of 
the Church Year. 

The Constantinopolitan Church divides the festi- 
vals into Great, Middle, and Little* The Great 
are subdivided into three classes. The first includes 
Easter only ; the second, twelve, viz. : Christmas,! 
Epiphany, Purification, Annunciation, Palm Sun- 
day, Ascension, Pentecost, Transfiguration, Repose 
of the Mother-of-God, Nativity of the Mother-of- 
God, Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Presentation of 
the Mother-of-God; the third, Circumcision, Nativity 
of St. John Baptist, SS. Peter and Paul, Decolla- 
tion of St. John Baptist, which are called Adodecata, 
because they are not of the former twelve. 

The first subdivision of the Middle Feasts includes 
those in which the office is not entirely of the day, 
but which have at Lauds an additional canon in 
honour of the Mother-of-God. Those of the second 
subdivision have the Polyeleos (Ps. 136) at Lauds, 
and include those Apostles' days which have not 

* See John Mason Neale, D. D.'s Essays on Ecclesiology, p. 99. 

f The Armenian Church has no such festival as Christmas. It 
has a Feast of the Apparition of the only begotten Son at Etchmiad- 
zine. All this is from Neale. — lb. 



THE saints' yeae. 39 

already been given, the days of great doctors or won- 
der-workers and of certain God-bearing fathers, as 
St. Simeon Stylites. 

The Less Feasts include those which, like the 
feasts already named, have the Great Doxology at 
Lauds and are called the Doxologized feasts, and 
those which have no Doxology. The former are 
marked in the kalendar in red ink, the latter in 
black. 

By the side of this old Christian Church Year 
grew another, formed by the superstitions of monks 
in dark years — a year of saints' days. "The former 
year," says Alt, "has not a fixed date for any of its 
feasts. It is, so to speak, a Heavenly reckoning of 
time which fixes and governs the date of Easter, 
(which, according to our conception, is always 
changeable) and with it the whole course of the year, 
by eternal and Divine laws. The latter, the Monk- 
ish, Middle- Age, Saints' Year, on the contrary , has 
dates fixed by the earthly civil reckoning, and, on 
account of the multitude of saints, has become a 
series of 365 or 366 days, of which every one de- 
mands a special celebration. 

" Therefore these two Church Years stand side by 
side and, though inwardly unrelated, are compelled 
to run their course in the same path and together. 
Hence they often conflict, and here, as in the Western 
Church, where we find the same state of things, the 
question has arisen, What can be done to obviate this 
evil? 

" The Western Church decided for the principle of 



40 HE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

peaceful mediation. Since its attempt to regulate 
the old Christian Easter- Year by fixed dates ; led to 
no result, it sought to bring the Saints Year, so far 
as possible, into agreement with it and to make the 
Saints' days come into a sort of connexion with its 
Sundays and Festivals ; and accordingly her Church 
Year, although varied enough, is yet a tolerably well- 
connected whole, and the Saints 5 days appear more 
or less to be integral parts of it. 

" The Eastern-Orthodox Church, on the other 
hand, whether from piety or because she saw that if 
an inner organic connexion was lacking, none could 
be created, abstained from such attempts at mediation 
and, in opposition to the West, decided upon a 
rigid sundering of the two. The Old-Christian Sun- 
day Year is here a year by itself; so also is the Mid- 
dle Age Saints' Year. To the former belong the 
Sundays ; to the latter only their early hours and the 
week days/' 

Since six days are given to the saints while only 
one remains for the worship of God, and since the 
clergy cherish and foster it, the worship of the saints 
has a great hold upon the people. Yet we cannot 
but see that if the lections, which have been so admi- 
rably arranged, were read and explained in the ver- 
nacular, as is the custom in those Protestant commu- 
nions which use the pericopes, the order of the Greek 
Sunday Year would be of great benefit to the people. 

3. The Western Church. 
In the Western Church we have to consider the 
usages of the Eoman Church and of the Protestant 



EOMAN CHURCH. 41 

in its two main and original representatives, the 
Lutheran and the Anglican Church. The first ad- 
heres closely to its ancient usages ; the two latter (as 
is the Protestant manner) make ancient usages con- 
form to present needs. The Anglican is distinguished 
by greater order ; the Lutheran practice, because of 
the sometimes inconsistent ecclesiastical statutes of 
the many German States, is confused and irregular. 
In all, the different Seasons, Sundays and Feasts 
have special Gospels and Epistles, Collects, Sequences, 
and colours for the Altar-cloths ; in the Roman and 
Anglican, have proper Psalms ; in the Roman and 
Lutheran, proper Introits ; and in the Lutheran, 
proper hymns. 

A. 
The year begins in the Roman Church on the 
Fourth Sunday before Christmas (S. nearest St. An- 
drew's day, First in Advent). There are greater and 
less feasts. The Calendar requires a special service on 
every day, but as it would be impossible for the laity 
to always attend, a distinction is made between 
Festa chori et fori, the observance of which by the 
people is enjoined, and Festa chori, whose observance 
is voluntary. The list of those enjoined has not 
always been the same ; but, " At present," says Alt, 
" in most Catholic countries, besides Sundays, the 
following are kept : the Easter and Pentecost festi- 
vals, Christmas, St. Stephen's day (Dec. 26), New 
Year (Circumcision), Epiphany (Day of the Three 
Kings, Jan. 6), Ascension, Trinity Sunday, Corpus 

4* 



42 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

Christi (Thursday after Trinity Sunday), Purification 
of the Blessed Virgin (Candlemas, Feb. 2), Assump- 
tion (Aug. 15), Immaculate Conception (Dec. 8), the 
day of St. Peter and Paul (June 29), All Saints' 
(Nov. 1), the anniversaries of the dedications of 
particular churches, and the day of the patron saint. 
Other feasts, as the feast of the Name of Jesus, the 
Birth and Naming of the Virgin, the feast of the 
Rosary of the Blessed Virgin, of St. Michael and 
the Guardian Angels, are for the most part put on 
the Sundays. Thus the Catholic Church has come 
to pretty much the same results as the Evangelical 
Church with reference to the observance of festivals, 
only by a quite different way." 

This section can be best illustrated by brief men- 
tion of some ceremonies peculiar to these days, but it 
must be borne in mind that many popular ceremonies 
were conjoined w T ith these in former times and other 
places, which have for the most part fallen into dis- 
use. 

a) The Vigils of Christmas begin at 6 o'clock on the 
evening of Dec. 24. The Introit is Ex. 16 : 6, 7 : At even, 
then shall ye know that the Lord hath brought you out from the 
land of Egypt ; and in the morning, then shall ye see the glory 
of the Loed. The Gospel is Matt. 1 : 18-21, the Birth of the 
Lord ; and the Offertory, Lift up your heads, ye gates, Ps. 
24 : 7. The custom of giving presents and having a Christ- 
mas tree belongs to the Evangelical Church in Germany, 
rather than to the Eoman. In the latter, presents are given 
either on the Eve of St. Nicholas or, as in Italy, on Epi- 
phany.* The first Mass of Christmas is at midnight, with 
the Introit, Ps. 2 : 7, and Is 9 : 2-7 for the Prophetical lec- 

* Alt. 



FEASTS. 43 

tion. The second is at dawn, with the Introit, Is. 9 : 6. The 
third Mass has the same Introit ; and after the Post-Commu- 
nion instead of John 1 : 1-14 (which is the Gospel), Matt. 
2 : 1-12, of the Wise Men, is said. From Christmas Eve 
until the Octave of Epiphany the priests' vestments and the 
Altar-cloths are white. The music is an especial feature, 
and in many churches shepherds 7 pipes, little bells, and 
instruments that children play, are used, as in Haydn's well- 
known Symphony.* 

The next day is St. Stephen's ; Dec. 27th is St. John's 
day, and Dec. 28th Holy Innocents'. The Church thus 
celebrates the three kinds of martyrdom, 1) in will and in 
deed, 2) in will though not in deed, 3) in deed but not in 
will. 

Jan. 1st is the Octave f of Christmas, and is the feast of the 
Circumcision. And here let it be noted that the seventh day 
after each feast of the first rank is celebrated as its Octave, 
the service having reference to the feast. 

* Alt. 

t " Octaves are observed to add greater dignity to the festivals. 
Thus Easter has been observed with an octave from the earliest 
times. Also (as Durandus says), as significant of the future glory 
of the Saint, whose day is being observed, the day itself commem- 
orating the event (as Christmas, our Lord's Birth), the Octave day, 
its future consummation, when we shall reap the full fruition. 
Sometimes the Octave commemorates a distinct event, as the Octave 
of Christmas is observed as the feast of our Lord's Circumcision, 
wherein He completed His humiliation by taking upon Him the 
yoke of the Law; — the Octave of Whitsunday is Trinity Sunday, 
because the end of the Holy Spirit's outpouring on the Church, is 
to lead us to the Beatific Vision of the Three in One. Sometimes 
the feast has an Octave, not only because of its dignity, but because 
of the many mysteries celebrated thereon. Thus, Epiphany com- 
memorates not only our Lord's manifestation, but also His Baptism 
and His first miracle at the Marriage of Cana." {The Ritual Reason 
Why, Charles Walker, p. 68.) I may add that these explanations 
of the Octaves (and the like, which frequently occur), are ingenious 
rather than authentic. 



44 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

b) For the Vigils of Epiphany the Introitis Wisd. 18 : 14, 
15. On Epiphamj the churches are brilliantly lighted. The 
Introit is Mai. 3:1, the Gradual, Is. 60: 6, and the offertory 
Ps. 72 : 10, 11. In old time a Feast of Asses was kept in 
some parts of France on the Octave. 

c) Feb. 2, the fortieth day after Christmas, is the Feast of 
the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The celebra- 
tion begins with the consecration of candles by the priest, 
clad in a violet * cope. In the first Oremus he prays, "O 
Lord, who hast created all things out of nothing, and by 
Thy command hast made this liquor to come through the 
labour of bees to the perfection of wax, and who to-day didst 
fulfil the prayer of righteous Simeon : we humbly beseech 
Thee through the invocation of Thy most holy name, and 
through the intercession of the Blessed Mary, always Virgin, 
whose feast we keep this day, and through the prayers of all 
Thy saints, to bless and sanctify these candles to the uses of 
men and the health of their bodies and souls, whether on 
earth or on the waters, and that from Thy holy Heavens 
Thou wouldst hear the voices of this Thy people, who 
carry them in Thine honor and praise Thee in their songs." 
The second Oremus contains the petition, " That Thou wilt 
vouchsafe to bless and sanctify these lighted candles which 
we, Thy family, desire to carry, and to kindle them with the 
light of Thy heavenly benediction." The third is directed 
to Jesus Christ, the Light of the world, praying, " Pour Thy 
blessing upon these waxen candles and sanctify them with 
the light of Thy grace, and in favor grant that, as these, 
lighted with fire that can be seen, drive away the shades of 
night, so our hearts, illumined by invisible fire, i. e., by 
the bright glory of the Holy Spirit, may be free from the 
blindness of any vices, that, the eye of our mind being 
cleansed, we may be enabled to discern the things which are 
pleasing unto Thee and useful to our eternal salvation." The 
fourth Oremus implores for the candles the grace of benedic- 
tion, that, as outward light shines forth from them, so also 

* Expressive of sadness. 



CANDLEMAS. 45 

the Light of the Spirit may shine within our souls. The 
fifth, in reference to the aged Simeon, who, enlightened by 
the Holy Ghost, recognized in the child the Saviour of the 
world, contains the petition, " Mercifully grant that, being 
enlightened and taught by the grace of the same Spirit, we 
may truly own and faithfully serve Thee." 

The candles, lying on the altar, are then thrice sprinkled 
with holy water and incensed. Then they are distributed 
among the clergy and people -; each kneels and kisses the 
hand of the priest, who hands the candle to him, while the 
choir sings the song of Simeon, Now Lord lettest Thou Thy 
servant depart in peace. The priest then says Procedamus 
in pace, and clergy and laity make a festal procession with 
lighted candles, which they keep in their hands during the 
Mass, until the beginning of the Communion. During the 
procession the following Antiphon is sung: "Adorn thy 
bridal chamber, Sion, and receive Christ, the King ! Em- 
brace Mary, who is the heavenly portal : for she bringeth the 
king of the glory of the new light. The Virgin stand eth, 
bringing in her hands her Son, begotten before Lucifer; 
whom Simeon taketh in his arms, preaching to the peoples 
that this is the Lord of life and death, and the Saviour of 
the world." 

At the end of the procession/the priest takes off his violet 
vestments and puts on white, and the Mass begins. The 
Introit is Ps. 48 : 10, 11 ; the Epistle, Mai. 3 : 1-4; the Gos- 
pel, Luke 2: 22-32. — This is called Candlemas; German, 
Mariae Lichtmess. — The symbolism is thus explained : " The 
candles are borne in procession because Christ was carried 
to the Temple ; at the Gospel, because it tells of His Pre- 
sentation ; and from the Consecration to the end of the ser- 
vice, because He, the true Light, is there present." * 

d) The priests fast from Septuagesima Sunday, but the Fast 
of the whole Church begins on Ash Wednesday, the forti- 
eth day before Easter. On that day the penitent congrega- 
tion is sprinkled or marked with the consecrated ashes of 

* Ritual Reason Why, 197. See Alt, Vol. 2. 



46 THE CHRISTIAN YEAK. 

the palm-branches (or evergreens) consecrated on Palm Sun- 
day of the preceding year. The idea of this may be gath- 
ered from the second Oremus : " Vouchsafe of Thy goodness 
to bless these ashes, which, in order to profess our humility 
and merit pardon, we put on our heads ; that we, who know 
we are but ashes, and on account of our wickedness and ill- 
desert are about to return to dust, may be worthy to receive 
the pardon of all our sins." The severity of the fast may be 
learned from the pastoral letters of Bishops, published every 
Lent. The prayers throughout Lent lay great stress on 
fasting; the priests wear violet instead of the green vestments 
of the Epiphany season from Septuagesima until Easter ; all 
instrumental accompaniment of Church music (except that 
of the organ) is forbidden; the Gloria in Excelsis is not sung 
in the Mass except on Holy Thursday ; the Alleluia after 
the Epistle ceases also on Septuagesima Sunday, and it was 
formerly the custom to sing it over many times in the ser- 
vice just preceding, this being called "The farewell to Alle- 
luia;" the Gloria Patri after the Introit is omitted from Judica 
Sunday, and from that day the Altar is clad in black. The 
services are intended to show the humiliation and sufferings 
of Christ, and to lead to and express the repentance of the 
congregation. On Palm Sunday palms are consecrated and a 
procession is made. 

The services become more solemn, if that be possible, in 
the Great or Holy Week; although this sadness is fitly 
broken on Green Thursday [In Ccena Domini) by the cele- 
bration of the Institution of the Holy Supper. The Gloria 
in Excelsis is sung, the bells ring, and the altar and the priests 
are clad in festal white. At the Mass the priest consecrates 
two wafers. One he eats then (the Middle Age custom of a 
general communion on this day having fallen into disuse) ; 
and the second is reserved for the communion on Good Fri- 
day.* In Cathedral churches, after the consecration of the 
Host, the archdeacon exorcises the oil for the use of the sick, 
and then blesses it. After the Sacrament has been received, 

* Mass of the Presanctified. 






THE GREAT WEEK. 47 

Chrism is consecrated and oil for use in confirmation. It is 
prescribed that in this consecration twelve priests, seven 
deacons, and seven archdeacons shall assist. Next the con- 
secrated Host that remains is put away for the morrow, w T hile 
the choir sings the hymn, u Pange lingua gloriosi" The 
altars are then stripped, the choir singing, They part my 
raiment among them and for my vesture they cast lots, Ps. 
22 : 18 ; the bare altars symbolizing Christ's loneliness when 
all forsook Him and fled. In Home, after the Mass, the 
Pope washes the feet of twelve priests and then serves them 
at table. This ceremony is also performed by some sovereigns 
and in some monasteries. On this day the Pope repeats his 
solemn excommunication of all heretics. In the service 
called the Tenebrse, the church is lighted by only fifteen 
candles, and the seven Messianic and the seven Penitential 
Psalms are recited. At the end of each Psalm one candle 
is extinguished. The one that is left is put away lighted, 
to be brought out again on Easter, to signify that Christ 
died but was not overcome by death. The Church now 
being dark, the service ends with a noise in memory either 
of the tumult at the trial of Christ or of the earthquake at 
His death. 

On Good Friday the priest serves in black at the bare altar. 
The Passion History is read dramatically. Then follows the 
Adoration of the Cross ; and then the Mass of the Presancti- 
fied, the Host being used which was reserved on Holy Thurs- 
day. Although the Council of Toledo enjoined a sermon on 
Good Friday, the general custom is to omit the sermon al- 
together on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of Holy Week. 

On Saturday the church is even stiller. At 3 or 4 o'clock 
in the afternoon Vespers begin, the remnant of the ancient 
Vigils of Easter. At this service new fire for the altar and 
incense are consecrated. During the chants, the church is 
brilliantly lighted. This was formerly one of the great times 
for Baptism. 

On Easter there is in some churches a sort of representa- 
tion of the Resurrection, and a procession. At the early, as 



48 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

well as at the principal. Mass, the Gloria in Excelsis and 
Alleluia are heard again, and all the bells ring. Hence these 
are sometimes called the Easter Gloria and Hallelujah Mass. 
Until the octave of Pentecost the altars and priests are clad 
in white ; the pictures which have been covered during Pas- 
sion-time are unveiled; and the altar is beautifully lighted. 
The Introit is Ps. 139 : 3, 5, 6 ; the Gradual, Ps. 118 : 24 ; the 
Offertory, Ps. 76; 8, 9; and the Easter sequence Victimce 
Paschali is sung. The fifty days between Easter and Pen- 
tecost are all festivals, except Monday, Tuesday, and 
"Wednesday before Ascension, which are called Rogation 
days. These are penitential ; the litany is said, and in some 
places there is a procession. 

e) At Pentecost the r^riests and altars wear red, in mem- 
ory of the fiery tongues. 

/) The Introit of Corpus Chrisii day (Thursday after 
Trinity Sunday) is Ps. 81 : 16 ; the Epistle 1 Cor. 11: 23-29; the 
Gradual, Ps. 145 : 15, 16 ; the Sequence, Lauda, Sion, Salva- 
torem (by Thomas Aquinas) ; the Gospel, John 6 : 55-58 ; 
and the Offertory, Lev. 21 : 6. There is a festal procession 
bearing the Host. In Spain it was formerly the custom to 
light great bonfires on the mountains the night before. At 
three o'clock in the morning the bells rang, and at ten the 
procession started, headed by men representing the four 
Evangelists, musicians and children representing angels. 
The different fraternities followed with banners and pictures 
of saints. Next, after more musicians, the priests announced 
the approach of the Consecrated Host by ringing the Mass- 
bell and swinging their censers. The Host is borne by the 
Bishop in his pontificals under a rich canopy. As it passes, 
all fall upon their knees and cross themselves. — Four 
altars are set up, and at each of these stations the procession 
halts. At the first the priest recites Matt. 1 : 1-16, and says, 
Lord, deal not with us according to our sins, and they re- 
spond, Nor reward us according to our iniquities ; at the second 
he recites Mark 1 : 1-18, and says, Peace be within Thy walls, 
to which they respond, And prosperity within Thy palaces ; 



saints' days. 49 

at the third, Luke 1: 1-17, with the versicle, The Lord will 
give His blessing, and the response, And our land shall yield 
her increase ; and at the fourth, John 1 : 1-14, with. Show us, 
Lord, Thy mercy, and the response, And give us Thy 
salvation. Then the priest prays for all saints, for protection 
and peace for the whole land, and for blessings upon the 
fruits of the fields. Finally, turning to the four quarters of 
the Heavens, he gives God's blessing to the people and to the 
fruits of the earth. — Sometimes the Host is exposed on the 
Altar for the forty hours' devotion of the people. 

g) The Feast of St. Peter and Paul, June 29th, is kept with 
much pomp. At Borne, St. Peter's Church is illuminate i 
the night before. On this day, after the Mass, the Pope 
gives his blessing to all the earth. 

h) On the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (as on 
all the other feasts of the Virgin) the Introit is, Let us all 
rejoice in the Lord, celebrating this day in honor of the Blessed 
Virgin Mary, for whose Assumption the angels rejoice and in 
common praise bless the Son of God. The Epistle is Sirach 
24: 11-20 ; the Gospel, Luke 10 : 38-42; and the Offertory, 
Mary hath been taken up into Heaven: the angels rejoice 
together praising and blessing the Lord, Alleluia. 

i) All Saints 1 Day, (Nov. 1st) has the same Introit; for 
Epistle, Rev. 7 : 2-12 ; the Gospel Matt. 5 : 1-12. 

j) All Souls 9 Lay, (Nov. 2d) is a natural outcome of the 
Romish doctrine of Purgatory and prayers for the dead. 
The Introit is, Give to them, Lord, eternal rest and let per- 
petual light shine upon them, with Ps. 65: 1, 2 ; the Epistle, 
1 Cor. 15 : 51-57 ; the Gradual begins with the same words 
as the Introit, ending with Ps. 112: 6, 7; the Tractus is, 
Absolve, Lord, the souls of all the faithful dead from every 
bond of their faults ; and let them, by Thy succoring grace, 
be rendered worthy to escape punishment and enjoy the 
blessedness of the eternal light Then follows the celebrated 
Sequence, Dies Tree, Dies ilia: the Gospel is John 5: 25-29; 
and the Offertory, LjOrd Jesus Christ, King of Glory ! free the 
souls of all the faithful dead from the sufferings of Hell and 

4 



50 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

from the deep lake ; free them from the mouth of the lion lest 
Hell swallow them and they fall into darkness : but let Si. 
Michael the standard-bearer represent them in holy light : as 
of old Thou didst promise to Abraham and to his seed ; sacri- 
fices and prayers do we offer to Thee to-day, Lord: do Thou 
accept them for those souls whose memory we keep to day : 
Make them, L^ord, to go over from death unto life. 

The Ember-days* are the proper seasons for the ordination 
of the Clergy. The Ttmpora Clausa are those times in which 
marriages are forbidden. "The first part of the Church 
Year, which, on account of its connection with the Easter 
festival, required a severe discipline, is Quadragesima (or 
Lent); and already the Synod of Laodicea in the year 363 (?) 
in its 51st Canon, forbade weddings in this time. When 
somewhat later Advent w r as patterned after Quadragesima, 
this prohibition was extended to it also. The Church has 
always observed this rule."f 

The Roman Catholic service does not acknowledge 
any distinction between a festal and a feastless half 
of the Church Year, but every day is a festival, and 
many are observed with as much pomp as the feasts 
of our Lord. The examples we have given show 
that there are in its service elements of sound in- 
struction and Scriptural worship, but all their beauty 
and force are lost in the Latin tongue. They exer- 
cise no proper influence upon the people, are in no 
sense their utterance, and like the daily service the 
Church Year becomes acenic rather than expressive 
or didactic. By fasts, by frequent will- worship, by 
the saints' days, by the consecration to extraordinary 
uses of inanimate things, and most of all by the 

* See p. 5. 

f Kliefoth, Liturgische Abhandlungen. I. Einsegnung der Ehe 
p. 115. 



THE LUTHERAN PRINCIPLE. 51 

transference to the Virgin of the honor due to the 
Saviour, the attention of the pious worshipper is taken 
from Christ and His Work. The Roman Catholic 
Ecclesiastical Year, like its service and creed, have 
grown (so to speak) rather by accretion than by de- 
velopment, the natural processes of rejection and 
assimilation ; and this will explain its relation to the 
Church Year of the Evangelical Church. 

B. 

(1.) 
The Evangelical or Lutheran Church changed 

those customs only which are contradictory to Scrip- 
ture, and admitted only those feasts and days which 
are based upon Scripture and separated from common 
days by a Gospel fact. Luther's position in regard 
to the Church Year might be easily misunderstood, 
because he sometimes contradicts himself. " He had 
a certain fixed principle in regard to holy times," 
says Daniel, u but when his bile was stirred by a 
farrago of superstitious customs, he transgressed his 
own bounds." One of the Romish abuses most 
complained of by the Reformers was the great num- 
ber of saints' days and festivals, which interrupted 
the labor of the common people and made them idle 
and immoral ; but still more did they oppose the opin- 
ion which obtained, that those earned merit before God 
who kept the feasts according to churchly prescription.* 

* New festivals were commanded daily, and new fasts, new cere- 
monies, and new honors to the saints were instituted, that by such 
works grace and all good might be earned of God. Augsbueg 
Confession, XXVIII. 40. 



52 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

Luther advised, " That all feasts be done away, 
and only Sundays kept. But if it be desirable to 
keep the days of our Lady and of the other great 
saints, let them all be put on Sunday, or let there be 
but a Mass in the morning, and let all the rest of the 
day be given to work; for by the present misuse of 
them in drunkenness, playing, idleness, and all sorts 
of sin, we anger God more on holy days than on any 
others. Before all, the Church consecrations ought 
to be quite rooted out, since they are nothing else 
than revelings and fairs. * * * * Some silly 
prelates imagine they have done a good work when 
they have kept the day of St. Ottilia or St. Barbara, 
or of any other one to whom, in blind devotion, they 
make a festival, and that they have done much bet- 
ter if they have taken a week-day to honor the saint. 
But thereby the common man is injured, for he has 
to neglect his work, is more exhausted than he would 
otherwise have been, and his body is weakened and 
unfitted for work. * * * * * What is against 
God and harmful to the body and soul of men, every 
congregation or council or magistracy has authority 
to abrogate and prevent, without the knowledge or 
will of Pope or Bishop/' But he says again, "Let 
every one have his own customs in peace, until it 
can be changed in an orderly way or made uniform, 
provided only that all the festivals be not done away. 
It would be well, however, if all were to keep the 
Sundays, the Annunciation, Purification, Visitation 
of the pure Virgin Mary, St. John Baptist's day, 
St. Michael's, the Apostles' days, and St. Mary Mag- 



THE LUTHERAN PRINCIPLE. 53 

dalene's ; of which feasts some have perhaps fallen 
into disuse already, and all cannot conveniently be 
restored. And especially should all keep Christmas, 
Circumcision, Epiphany, the Easter festival, Ascen- 
sion, and Pentecost, — unchristian legends and songs 
which have been affixed to them being done away. 
The festivals have been so arranged because all parts 
of the Gospel cannot be heard at once, and therefore 
its doctrine has been distributed throughout the year." 
Melanchthon concurred in this opinion, and Luther's 
conduct, as we shall see, showed this respect for the 
festivals.* 

Chemnitz enumerates the following superstitions 
in regard to festivals, which had crept into the Church : 
That Sundays were of peculiar sanctity ; that it was 
real worship of God if on fast-days they abstained 
from labor and went to church, even though the days 
were not used for the true exercise of piety; that 
peculiar merit belonged to the feasts ; that it was enough 
if on festivals, or even on the Lord's days, only, they 

* " Such ordinances it behooveth the churches to keep for charity 
and quietness' sake, so that one offend not another, that all thmg3 
may be done in order, and without tumult in the Church, 1 Cor. 
14: 40, and Phil. 2: 14, but so that consciences be not burdened. 
* * * * Such is the observation of the Lord's day, of Easter, 
of Pentecost, and like holidays and rites. For they that think that 
the observation of the Lord's day was appointed by the authority 
of the Church, instead of the Sabbath, as necessary, are greatly de- 
ceived. The Scripture, which teacheth that all Mosaical ceremo- 
nies can be omitted after the Gospel is revealed, has abrogated the 
Sabbath. And yet, because it was requisite to appoint a certain 
day, that the people might know when they ought to come together, 
it appears that the Christian Church did for that purpose appoint 
the Lord's day : which for this cause also seemed to have been 

4* 



54 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

heard the Word of God, prayed, &c. ; that sins were 
destroyed by them ; the too scrupulous prohibition 

pleasing, that men might have an example of Christian liberty, and 
might know that the observation, neither of the Sabbath, nor of any 
other day, was of necessity." ArG. Conf., XXVIII. 

"The people retained certain of their fathers' customs, which, 
somewhat changed, the Apostles accommodated to the Gospel His- 
tory, as, for instance, the Passover and Pentecost, that not only by 
teaching, but by these examples, they might hand down to poster- 
ity the memory of the greatest events. * * * * • The pru- 
dent reader can easily see that the Apostles wished to free the peo- 
ple from that foolish notion concerning the necessity of a certain 
time, when they forbid them to be anxious, even though they err 
in reckoning." Apology for the Confession, VII., VITL, 154. 

"But old traditions established in the Church for the sake of 
utility and tranquillity [such as the three high feasts, &c, the Sun- 
days and the like], we willingly keep and we interpret them in the 
most favorable way. but with the exclusion of the opinion that they 
justify." lb. XV. (VIII.) 212. 

4 'In the beginning this must again be prefaced, that we do not 
abolish the Mass, but religiously retain and defend it. For Masses 
are held among us on every Sunday, and on the other festivals, in 
which the Sacrament is given to those who wish to use it, after 
they have been examined and absolved. And the usual public 
ceremonies are kept also, the order of the lections, vestments, and 
the like." lb. XXIV. (XII.), 250. 

"Although the angels in Heaven pray for us (as also Christ 
Himself does), and also saints on earthy and perhaps even in 
Heaven, notwithstanding it does not follow that angels and saints 
are to be called upon and adored by us, that we must honor them 
with fasts, feasts, oblations, and by founding temples, altars and 
worships, and in other ways, as though they were patrons and in- 
tercessors, and that power to assist in certain cases should be at- 
tributed to them, as the Papists teach and do. This is idolatrous ; 
and this honor must be given to God alone. For thou art able as 
a Christian and Saint on earth to pray for me, not only in one, but 
in any necessity ; yet I ought not therefore adore thee, pray to 
thee, celebrate feasts, fasts, oblations, masses and worship in thine 
honor, and trust thee for nry salvation, since I am able to honor, 
esteem and thank thee in other ways. Therefore if this idolatrous 
worship of angels and dead saints were done away, the other ven- 



LUTHEKAN USAGE. 55 

of external works ; disputes about the beginning of 
festivals, whether they did not extend from evening 
to evening ; that it is enough to hear the Mass ; that 
it is mortal sin not to keep the feasts; their 
great number; many have no basis in Scripture; 
some were instituted to merit the patronage of saints; 
and the ridiculous ceremonies performed on some.* 
These are condemned by the Lutheran Confessions. 

But the old order of the year and the pericopes of 
the Comes were retained. Luther was not satisfied 
with the Epistle lections, but thought their selection 
showed the hand of a " very unlearned and super- 
stitious overestimator of works," and he hoped for a 
change when the whole service should be had in the 
vernacular. But he did not attempt a change, and 
there have been but few, unimportant alterations. As 
usual in Germany (owing to its political divisions), 
there was not uniformity in the retention and abroga- 
tion of minor feasts ; but there was a gradual pro- 
gress in all the Churches. 

A review of the Lutheran Church Year will show 
that though some feasts were dropped, it remained a 
consistent whole. The Year of the Ancient Church 
had for its foundations the great facts of the life of 

eration would be unharmed, and will soon fall into forgetfulness. 
For where the hope of profit, and of spiritual and bodily help is 
taken away, there the worship of the saints speedily vanishes, 
whether they are in their graves or in Heaven. For without profit 
or out of pure love, no one will be likely to keep their memory, to 
worship them, or to give them Divine honor." Schmalkald 
Articles, I. II., 30. 

* Chemnitz Examen Concilii Tridentini, De Diebus Festis. 



53 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

our Lord, and the Lutheran Church kept these. In 
the Middle Age, when Mass was celebrated daily, 
one day was like another. Then, in order to give 
a special sanctity to the Sundays and great feasts, the 
Old Testament commandments and prohibitions, in 
reference to the Sabbaths and the Feasts, were gra- 
dually transferred to them. The Lutheran Church 
would not acknowledge this sanctity of certain days, 
for it is not taught in the Bible ; but the Word of 
God, in the order of its living events, sanctifies them. 
All stress is laid upon the Word ; no sanctity belongs 
to the day. The Lutheran Church, therefore, restored 
the Church Year in its purity. 

Inasmuch as God has wrought His Gospel among 
men by means of men, it is proper there should be days 
of the Church as well as feasts of the Lord. And 
the Lutheran Church retained also the foundations 
of the Year of the Church, in its narrower acceptation. 
St. John Baptist's day celebrates the preparation for 
the Gospel ; on the days of the Apostles, the founda- 
tion of the Church is commemorated ; the Church 
Militant is represented by St. Mary Magdalen, St. 
Stephen, the Holy Innocents, and St. Lawrence ; and 
the Church Triumphant, by St. Michael. 

Kliefoth also traces the difference between the 
Lutheran and Reformed practice, in regard to fes- 
tivals, to their difference of principle. The latter, 
on the principle of Christian freedom, regarded all 
days alike ; but, desiring some sanction for the Lord's 
clay, transferred to it the Sabbath Law. Discarding 
the Sacramental in worship, the Reformed kept, in- 



WHAT CONSTITUTES A FEAST. 57 

deed, Sundays and single feasts, but without organic 
connection between them. They were based upon 
the piety of the worshippers, and were consequently 
of a sacrificial nature. The Reformed Church is, 
therefore, the home of penitential days and days of 
prayer. 

" What constitutes a feast," continues Kliefoth, " is 
not alone the Church's impulse to adoration, etc., but 
at the same time and much before this sacrificial mo- 
tive, the reference of the day to the Sacred History, 
and its consecration through a corresponding Word 
of God ; indeed, this sacramental moment is the pri- 
mitive, which, through its significance, power and 
operation, has first begotten and awakened the whole 
sacrificial activity of the Congregation, and on which 
the latter depends ; and it must, therefore, be said 
that a clay is not rendered holy by our preaching, 
praying, etc., but by a word and work of God, 
Thus, through her acknowledgment of the Sacra- 
mentalness of the Word of God, our Church was led 
to the right acknowledgment and use, not only of the 
service, but also of the Church Year, and was not 
(like the Reformed) so unfortunate as to wreck the 
whole Church Year, but rather restored it, according 
to its original idea, and in its sound arrangement."* 

(2.) 

The Church Year begins in the Lutheran Church 

also on the fourth Sunday before Christinas, Advent 

* Kliefoth's Die Urspriingliehe Gottesdienstordnung in den 
deutschen Kirchen Iutherischen Bekenntnisses. I. p. 372 and 
passim. 



58 THE CHRISTIAN YEAE. 

Sunday, which, in some places, was observed as a 
festival.* It was formerly the custom in many 
places to read then the names of those who, in the 
year just ended, had been born, had died, or had 
been married. Advent continues until Christmas. 
The week day lections were chosen with reference to 
the season. Lossiusf says, u The Church celebrates 
a threefold coming of Christ. The first is His lowly 
coming in the flesh, spoken of in Zech. 9:9; Matt. 
21 : 4. The second is His spiritual and daily coming 
into the hearts of the pious, when He is constantly 
present with the Church, hears, helps and consoles 
her, of which Christ speaks, John 14 : 18, 23. The 
third coming of Christ is His glorious return to 
judgment, spoken of in Is. 3 : 14; Matt. 24 : 30." 
" Therefore," continues Kliefoth, " our fathers did 
not take Advent to be merely the introduction to the 
Christmas festival, and the preparation for it (as 
often our moderns falsely do), but rightly as the 
introduction and preparation for the whole Church 
Year, in whose successive parts the coming of our 
Lord in flesh to His work and office, the coming of 
the Lord to His Church, and the future coming of 
the Lord to judgment, are declared." The altars 
were clothed with violet, or, at least, with less festive 
colors than before. Many JZirchenordnungen forbid 
marriages in Advent, or from Advent Sunday to the 

* a Reformed theologians and Kirchenordnungen, on the contrary, 
because they have given up the Church Year, begin their reckonings 
of days of service with New Year day." Kliefoth, iv., 403. 

f Quoted in Kliefoth, iv. 405. 



THE TEMPORA CLAUSA. 59 

First Sunday after Epiphany, and from Ash Wed- 
nesday to the first Sunday after Easter.* Then fol- 

* These are the Tempora Clausa, or Closed Times, After quoting 
the old Kirchenordnungen (e. g. Pomeranian, 1574, Saxon, 1.580, Lune- 
burg, 1646, Magdeburg, 1734, etc.), Kliefoth says : " Our Church 
has not proceeded from the Romish principle that there are holy- 
times, in the sense that a Christian must live otherwise and holier 
in some times than in others, nor from the other principle, which it 
must be confessed in some measure pervaded the Ancient Church, 
that there was something impure in marriage, of which a Christian 
has to be ashamed, and that, therefore, it must be relegated to the 
less holy times. But she proceeded from the facts that in the course 
of nature weddings cannot be without gaiety: and, on the other 
hand, that the appointment of days of Divine service, the inter- 
twining of the facts of salvation with the life of men, and the de- 
velopment of the Church Year with its times of Christian joy and 
sadness, have an ethical and historical necessity, and that this in- 
stitution of the Church must be interwoven with Christian life and 
all its usages. Therefore, she did not wish to have weddings and 
their gaiety on the holidays, or on the days before them, that the 
purpose of these days might not be hindered. Therefore, in the 
great times of the Church's sadness and of Christian sobriety, Advent 
and Lent, she demanded that her members should give up, with 
other things, the gaiety of weddings. And she made an ecclesiastical 
law of it, because she wished to bring up her members to the sanc- 
tification of these days of God's service, and to self-forgetfulness in 
these great seasons for contemplation, even against the will of the 
flesh ; and because she knew that there can be no education'without 
discipline, and that a morality, which is to exercise discipline, must 
have a foundation. It is, indeed, impossible to justify these views 
and experiences of our older Church to the antinomianism of our 
days, which, in contradiction of the Reformation, is always ready 
to urge Christian freedom against every ordinance of the Church ; . 
to that Spiritualism, which hopes to have exercise in godliness with- 
out any askesis, and churchly services without a Church Year ; to 
that unhistorical spirit which is afraid of all Church usages, because 
of their age, and thinks that progress consists principally, or alto- 
gether, in the removal of everything that has been. And under the 
pressure of these modern spirits, the authority of those old laws has 
been relaxed. In most of the national Churches, later legislation 



60 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

lows the dear, lovely feast of the Holy Birth of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, as Luther called it. This, unlike 
other feasts, was kept with sacred matins or noc- 
turnes. Old superstitious customs can be traced in 
the popular celebration of Christmas Eve in Ger- 
many. " The many popular customs and usages at 
Christmas time were fostered, not puritanically per- 
secuted, by our old Church. Yet this did not prevent 
her from opposing Popish superstitions. The Pfaltz- 
Neuburg Kirchenordnung forbids the consecration of 
wine on St. John's day, and the plays in the Church, 
the representation of the Christ-child in the cradle, 
etc*, at Christmas." St. Stephen's and St. John's 
day (Dec. 26th and 27th) were kept in some lands, 
abrogated in others. But, generally, three days were 
given to the Christmas festival. Consequently, the 
martyrdom of St. Stephen was rarely preached upon. 
The Gospel of the Holy Innocents is put by some on 
the Sunday after Christmas ; by the Church Book, 
it is put on the Sunday after New Year. 

The Circumcision of our Lord falls on January 1, 
and Luther was displeased with those who departed 
from the old custom and celebrated the birth of the 
civil year instead. Later usage combined the two 

lias at least limited the sphere of the tempus clausum : in some, only 
the Still Week is a closed time ; in others, only the week before 
Christmas and the Still Week ; in others, the eight days before 
Christmas and the fourteen before Easter ; of course, there is no prin- 
ciple either in retaining or in rejecting ; for how, for example, does 
the last wee : i of Advent, or of Lent, differ from the others ? And 
where the letter of the old laws is still in force, there, at least by 
the frequency and carelessness of dispensations, the law is made 
illusory/' Kliefoth. Einsegnung der Ehe ,118, f. 



EPIPHANY. 61 

thoughts, which are reflected in the Collects. Ger- 
ber (a dry old anecdotist quoted by Daniel) censures 
the preachers who on this day load those of their 
hearers who are in authority with fulsome compli- 
ments. " On this day," says Chemnitz, li is taught 
how Christ was made under the Law, the liberty of 
a Christian is considered, and the greetings of the 
New Year are added."* • 

Epiphany (Jan. 6) is variously called the day of 
the three kings, of the Manifestation of Christ, Der 
Obere Tag and Soke Neujahr. Luther preferred for 
this day the Gospel of the Baptism of Christ. " Since 
a feast of the Manifestation of Christ is celebrated, 
why not let it be this manifestation, where God the 
Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost is so strik- 
ingly revealed?" No notice is taken of this festival 
in the Prussian Liturgy. f It has its proper place 
among the Danes and Swedes, in Saxony, and in 

* Chemnitz, Examen IV. V. III. 60. 

f Daniel enumerates ninety-nine Lutheran Kirchenordnungen at 
the beginning of Vol. II. of his Codex Liturgicus. There were so 
many, because Germany was divided into many sovereign states, 
each of which organized its Church independently of the others. 
We gather from Kliefoth's chapter on the Destruction of the Lu- 
theran service in the course of the 18th Century, that they may be 
divided as follows : 1. Those of the Reformation period, which are 
animated by the same spirit, some being more or less affected by Re- 
formed principles or neighborhood. 2. Those which followed the 
Thirty Years' War, which repeated and sought to re-establish the 
former among a people who had lost their old religious habit. 3. 
Those indirectly affected by the Pietistic controversies, which reas- 
serted the old and opposed the advance of subjectivism, but uncon- 
sciously conceded much (about the beginning of the 18th century). 
4. Those corrupted, altered and weakened bv Rationalism. 

5 



62 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

some other regions, and is logically necessary to the 
Lutheran Church Year. The Church Booh has the 
Gospel of the Wise Men, Christ" s Manifestation to 
the Gentiles. Epiphany commemorates the coming 
forth of the Saviour into the world. On the first 
Sunday after, His glory is manifested to the doctors 
in the Temple and to His chiding mother, Luke 2 : 
41-52 ; $n the second, a different glory to His disci- 
ples and mother at the wedding-feast, John 2 : 1-11 ; 
on the third, another glory to great multitudes and 
to the heathen centurion, Matt. 8: 1-13; on the 
fourth, His power over the winds and sea is shown, 
Matt. 8: 23-27; on the fifth, His wisdom and love 
in sparing the godless and preserving the good in 
His Church, Matt. 13 : 24-30 ; and on the sixth, the 
exhibition of His glory culminates in the Transfigu- 
ration, Matt. 17 : 1-9. The last Gospel is peculiar 
to the Lutheran Church. 

We have now come to Lent, extending in the Lu- 
theran Church also from Ash Wednesday to Easter. 
It is a mistake to suppose that Luther wished the 
custom of fasting to be altogether given up.* The 

* He thought that no one ought to keep it to the ruin of his health, 
but that such an one should use and defend his Christian liberty. 
Rostlin, Luther's Theologie. See Augs. Conf..Art. XXVI. Apology, 
XV. " Such fasting and mortification ought not to be only for a certain 
time, but constantly. For God would have us always live temper- 
ately and soberly, and experience teaches that prescribed fasts do 
not help much to that end." And Y., " True prayers, true alms, 
and true fasts have the command of God ; and where they 
have the command of God, they cannot be omitted without 
sin." Chemnitz says {Eximsn IV. IV.): '"' A true fast has tes- 
timonies and examples in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New 
Testaments.* * * * * A fast is not of itself and in itself worship 



FASTS. 63 

Ecclesiastical statutes of the Electorate of Branden- 
burg (1540) expressly and for good reasons ordain 
the customary fasts on Friday and Saturday of each 
week and on the forty days of Lent,* but with the 

of God. But if a fast is conjoined with penitence and prayer, that 
is, if a fast is referred to this end and is ordained that the flesh may 
be brought under control and into servitude, that it may not fight 
against the spirit, nor impede nor disturb its actions by petulance or 
carelessness, but our body may ba ready and fit for spiritual things 
and to do what belongs to it, that neither fulness nor slothfulness 
may give occasion to sin, but that the mind may be admonished 
and made apter for spiritual affections, and in order that the spirit 
may be enabled to devote itself more ardently and freely, and may be 
at leasure for penitence, prayer, and other exercises of piety ; if, 
I say, fasting is used for this end, it is well-pleasing to God. But 
when a fast is undertaken and exercised without that purpose, 
as if of itself, ex opere operato, it were a worship of God, then 
God plainly shows that He will not abide it. If a superstitious 
end, or an impious ascription of worship, merit, justification, or 
satisfaction for sin be added to the fast, then God absolutely rejects 
and abominates it. * * * * * A fast cannot be prescribed for all 
equally in the same form. * * * * In the New Testament, together 
with the other Levitical ceremonies, this concerning a certain and 
appointed day of fasting was abrogated, nor do we read that another 
and definite time was appointed in its place. * * * * * Nor was 
such a time fixed by the Apostles, the Apostolic Fathers, or the 
early Church. It is the doctrine of Tertullian that the Apostles in- 
deed taught that we must fast, but did not impose a yoke, so far as 
time is concerned, of certain fasts to be observed by all under com- 
mand. They left it to the judgment and free will of the Church 
and of believers ; so that upon occasion the bishops might appoint, or 
private men might undertake, fasts, not as under a command, but 
freely and of their own accord. The ancient Church therefore 
used and defended liberty in fasts, without an opinion of necessity, 
both as regards times and foods, as to what days they should fast on 
and when." 

* "And since in the time of Lent flesh is unseasonable, and our 
Electorate of Brandenburg is richly provided with fish, it is not im- 
proper to ordain that at this time the people abstain from the use of 
meat, and that wanton transgressors (of this regulation) be pun- 
ished." The same motive is declared in an ordinance of Queen 
Elizabeth of England. 



64 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

express proviso that the people should be notified 
that their conscience is not at all bound by such time 
and difference of meats, nor is a sin before God made 
of it, except by malicious obstinacy and offense. The 
Kirchenordnung of Calenberg and Gottingen (1542) 
says, " Let us be satisfied with what has been said of 
Quadragesima, as the Fast is called, — with the admo- 
nition that those who eat meat are not to be despised 
by those who eat none. Let it be known that such a 
fast does not earn the forgiveness of sin but is a 
bodily exercise, through which a man is made fitter 
for all good, especially for prayer. And such fasts 
ought of right always to be in use among us Chris- 
tians." But, although some yet piously fast on 
Good Friday and before coming to the Lord's Sup- 
per, the custom is obsolete in the Lutheran Church. 
Consequently great pains were taken to root out the 
old carnival excesses of Fast-night (night before Ash 
Wednesday). — The altars were clothed during Lent 
in violet or black, songs of joy were omitted, the or- 
gans were silent, and weddings were solemnly for- 
bidden. The week-day sermons are upon the Pas- 
sion of Christ (for which a synopsis by Bugenhagen 
furnishes the texts) and are so arranged that the 
whole Passion History shall have been preached upon 
by Judica Sunday (the 5th in Lent) ; and then it is 
begun and preached over again. The pericopes of 
the Sundays pourtray in remarkable and instructive 
contrast, what may be called the victorious humilia- 
tion of Christ. On the first in Lent, He overcomes 
in the Temptation ; on the second, He casts the devil 



KA/RWOCHE. 65 

out of the Syrophoenician woman's daughter ; on the 
third, He demonstrates His triumphant hostility to the 
devil; in these the Lord is shown to be victorious 
over darkness and the catechumens are prepared to 
renounce the devil and all his works ; on the fourth, 
Christ's Prophetical office is illustrated ; on the fifth, 
His High-priestly ; on the sixth, His Kingly ; and 
thus the catechumens are prepared to put their trust 
in Him.* These were the pericopes of the old 
Church. She did not reckon the Sundays to belong 
io the fast. The pericopes belong to the Evangelical 
Church rather than to the Romish, for they retain their 
meaning only in the vernacular. This is also one of 
the seasons for the quarterly public examinations in 
the catechism, which have taken the place of the Em- 
berdays and the fasts introduced by them. 

In the G-reat or Holy or Still Week, called in 
Germany Karwoche, the Passion History was repeated 
and preached upon in the morning and at vespers 
every day, or the events were distributed to the days 
on which they were believed to have happened. 
Palm Sunday is generally the day for the confirma- 
tion of those who on Holy Thursday, Good Friday 
or Easter, will partake of their first Communion. f 
Good Friday gets special observance. It used to be 
the custom to recite the Passion of our Lord " with 
solemn and dramatic song," In some Agendas it is 

•Kliefoth, Alt, II. 489 IF. 

t tl We would recommend that the confirmation be transferred 
from Palm Sunday to Quasimodogeniti, for which Sunday well 
known old traditions speak." Kliefoth V. 322. 

5* 



66 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

prescribed that after the words "He gave up the 
ghost " have been said, the minister and people on 
bended knees shall silently say the Lord's Prayer. 
In some churches, after the afternoon sermon, at 
three o'clock, the bells ring and Hermann's hymn, 
Traiirigkeit, Herzeleid is sung, or Rist's Nun 
giebt mein Jesus gate nacht. The people call this 
Dem Herrn Jesu zu grabe lauten. While Romish 
Churches are empty, stripped or silent, Lutherans 
are sure to be at Church on Good Friday, and it is a 
day of frequent and almost continuous worship. It 
may be noted that a joyous element is always, even 
in the saddest times, to be found in the worship of 
the Lutheran Church. The altar is clothed with 
black on Good Friday. Holy Saturday has no spe- 
cial observance. 

Easter , though the chief of the festivals, has no 
special observance. It used to include three days # 
The altar cloths are ivhite. The old custom of con- 
necting Baptism with Easter Eve has fallen into dis- 
use. Easter is a chief day of communion in the 
American Church. The old Reformers tried to pre- 
vent a too numerous communion on that day, pre- 
ferring that there should be communicants present 
every Sunday. The first Sunday after Easter is 
among many the day of confirmation. 

Formerly Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of 
the week after Rogate Sunday were called Rogation 
days and celebrated with processions, litanies and 
prayers ; but although these customs were originally 
purged and kept by some Lutheran Churches, they 



SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY. 67 

linger now only in the penitential days kept at dif- 
ferent fixed times. 

Ascension Day is kept, but in the Church of 
Prussia (which is United, not Lutheran), is trans- 
ferred to the next Sunday. 

Whitsunday, Pentecost or Pfingsten is kept. The 
altar-cloths are red. 

Trinity Sunday closes what some call the festal 
half of the Church Year. In the first cycle, from 
Advent to Epiphany, the goodness of God the Father 
is revealed to us in the gift of His Son ; from Epi- 
phany until Ascension, Christ the Son is revealed ; 
on Pentecost, having been heralded by the Gospels of 
the preceding Sundays, God the Holy Ghost is mani- 
fested. " As on the other feasts our Lord God is 
clothed and wrapped in His works," says Luther, 
" So that thereby we may learn His heart and will 
towards us, this present feast has been ordained that, 
as far as possible, we may learn out of His Word 
what God is in Himself, without clothing or works, 
in the Divine essence merely." It is dedicate to the 
" Holy Trinity and the Undivided Unity." 

As this dispensation is the manifestation of the 
Holy Ghost in the Church, in which He takes the 
things of Christ and shows them unto us, so the re- 
mainder of the Church Year, the Sundays after Tri- 
nity, is the application to the life of men of the 
facts commemorated in the Festal or Dogmatic half, 
in lessons which are by them made intelligible. The 
Sundays are called First, Second, &c, after Trinity, 
while in the Roman Church they are numbered from 



68 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

Pentecost. In former times they were variously di- 
vided.* Kliefoth says, " After the pericopes of the 
Festal Half of the year have preached the great 
work of the Triune God which lies at the basis of hu- 
man salvation, the pericope of the Octave of Pente-^ 
cost speaks of the establishment of this salvation in 
men, of Regeneration, and then follow three sets of 
lections (from The Rich Man to our Lord's Admoni- 
tion to he merciful, from the Miraculous Draught of 
Fishes to No man can serve two masters, and from the 
Widow of Nain to the end) which successively preach 
of the beginning of the subjective Christian life in 
Penitence and Faith, of its development in this world 
and time, and of its completion, its ripening in 
time for Eternity, and of Eternity itself. This is the 
sense in which our Church has taken this succession 
of pericopes. f 

The feast of Corpus Christi was retained by some 
early Lutheran Agendas (as a Feast of the Lord's 
Supper) although Luther declared himself more 
hostile to it than to any other, and wished its abro- 
gation. By the year 1600 it had fallen almost alto- 
gether into disuse. 

I have already shown that the Gospels of some of 
the Trinity Sundays are adapted to the times of the 
year in which they fall. This beauty is appreciable 
only in the Protestant Church, where they are read 
in the vernacular. In the Lutheran Church the Tenth 
Sunday after Trinity is distinguished by a solemn nar- 
* See foregoing Historical Table. f IV. 460, 461. 



END OF THE CHURCH YEAR. 69 

ration of the destruction of Jerusalem, because it usu- 
ally is near to the tenth of August, the alleged date 
of that event. The last Sunday is sometimes called 
the Feast of the Last Day, on account of its Gospel ; 
and among some it is customary then to celebrate a Feast 
of the Dead, which takes the place of the Roman All- 
Saints' Day, Rom. 3 : 21-28 being the Epistle, and 
Matt. 5 : 1-12, the Gospel.* While the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer (and the Roman order) prescribes that 
" If there be any more Sundays before Advent Sun- 
day (after xxv. after Trinity), the service of some of 
those Sundays that were omitted after the Epiphany, 
shall be taken in to supply so many as are here 
wanting," in accordance with the old custom of end- 
ing the year with those Gospels and beginning the 
New Year with Septuagesima,f the Lutheran Church 
gives to each of these Sundays lections of its own. 
Luther chose Matt. 24 : 15-28, the Abomination of 
Desolation for the 25th Sunday; Matt. 25 : 31-46, the 
Judgment, for the 26th, or, if there were another, for 

* Although this is a peculiarly German custom, a commemora- 
tion of the dead on that day will be found also among Pennsylvania 
Germans. 

f Dominica post Pentecosten non possunt esse pauciores viginti 
tribus, neque plures viginti octo. Cum aut em fuerint plures viginti 
quatuor, tunc post xxij. Dominicam resumuntur quae eo anno su- 
perfiierunt post Epiphaniam, quoad Orationem, Homiliam. et Anas 
ad Benedictus et Magnificat hoc ordine: Si Dominica' post Pentecos- 
costen fuerint xxv., Dominica xxiv. p. Pent, erit qua', est v. p. Epi- 
phaniam, et xxv. quce est vj. Si fuerint xxvij., Dominica xxiv. erit 
qua?, est iv.p. Epiph., xxv. erit v., etxxj. erit vj. Si, uerint xxviij. 
Dominica xxiv. erit quce est iij. p. Epiph. , xxv. erit iv., et xxvj. erit 
v. et xxvij. erit vj. Et ultimo loco semper pon it ur, qua: sequitur hie 
in ordine xxiv. Breviarium Romanum. Pars Autumnal is. 



70 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

the 27th, in that case, putting Matt. 24 : 37-51 on 
the 26th. In his Postil, he chose Matt. 5 : 1-12 for 
the last Sunday. In the Church Book the order is 
25th, Matt. 2*4: 15-28; 26th, Matt. 25: 31-46; 
27th, Matt. 25 : 1-13. Nebe adds, " We find that 
the Lutheran Church felt it to be necessary to close 
the Trinity Season and the Church Year with refer- 
ence to the Last Things. All the texts that have 
been chosen point thitherward ; the Transfiguration 
reveals His hidden, and therefore future, majesty ; 
the Beatitudes are voices from on high pointing from 
the sufferings of this present time to the glory which 
shall be revealed in them that believe. Sarcerius' 
choice of John Baptist's preaching of repentance will 
not answer this, although there is much to recommend 
it. It may be claimed for the choice of Hesshusius, 
the Parable of the Ten Virgins, that it has a good 
memory as the pericope of St. Catherine's Day, No- 
vember 25. 

u This finial, which Luther put to the old Pericope 
system, proves that this man of God, if any one, was 
fit to lay his hand on the whole and better it. It is 
ever to be lamented that he had not leisure for this 
undertaking. Judging from what he has done, we 
may confidently say that it would have been an un- 
surpassable master-piece, and would have spared 
succeeding generations much strife and weariness.* 

The ancient custom of celebrating the anniversaries 
of Churches has been kept in many parts of the Lu- 

* A. Nebe. Die Evangelischen Perikopen des Kirchenjahres. I. 
29, 30. 



FEASTS OF THE VIKGIN. 71 

theran Church, although Luther inveighed against 
them as abominable, on account of " the gluttony, 
murder, thieving, dishonor of God, and all unprin- 
cipled deeds, which result from those taverns, markets 
and playing courts/' These Kirmessen (as they were 
called) were more frequent in Saxony. They have 
been regulated by law. 

Feasts of the Blessed Virgin have been retained by 
the Lutheran Church, but as Feasts of our Lord. 
They are not everywhere, nor strictly kept. The 
Conception and Presentation of Mary, which have no 
Scriptural warrant or dogmatic interest, were not 
kept at all. Her Nativity and Assumption, which 
have no better basis, Luther was willing to let 
remain for a while, and they were ordained by a 
number of the early Lutheran service-books, some- 
times on account of popular or civil customs con- 
nected with their observance ; but they have fallen 
into disuse. Kliefoth ascribes this to the reaction 
after the attempt to reinstate them by the Interim. 
The three remaining feasts are founded on Scripture. 
Luther said of the Annunciation, " We keep this 
feast, which ought to be called the feast of the Con- 
ception or Incarnation of Christ, for the sake of the 
Article in the Creed : I believe in Jesus Christ, His 
only Son, Our Lord, who to as conceived by the Holy 
Ghost, Bom of the Virgin 3fary." " All the Lu- 
theran Service-books of the 16th Century ordain for 
this a whole day's observance/' says Kliefoth ; "a 
great number of the most venerable reckon it among 
festivals of the Lord Christ." The 



72 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

"Little" Wiirtemberg Kirchenordnung of 1536 
directs that there shall be a sermon on this day, but 
afterwards the people may go to work ; but the 
" Great " (of 1553) restores the observance of the 
whole day; the Strasburg of 1598 is the only one 
satisfied with a sermon on its Gospel, at the early 
service of the week-day on which it falls ; and the 
Osnabriick of 1652 is the first to reduce it to a half- 
day's observance. Because its lessons seem at first 
to be ill-suited to Passion Week, in which it often 
falls, it has been sometimes transferred to other days ; 
but there is an inner connection, which is reflected in 

the Collect. Of the Purification (also approved 

by Luther), Chemnitz says, " Upon this feast we are 
taught how Christ was the First-born among many 
brethren, useful admonitions are given to young 
mothers, and the lovely song of Simeon is ex- 
plained." It has had the same history in the Lu- 
theran Church as the Annunciation, Of the Visitation 
Luther said, " This feast the Pope instituted in order 
to drive aw T ay the Turks, but we will celebrate it 
that we may give thanks to God for the glorious 
revelation which was given on this day, so that the 
pious old matron Elizabeth was so full of the Holy 
Ghost, that, although she knew nothing of the Con- 
ception of Christ, she brake out and confessed that 
the Maiden Mary is really the mother of our Lord and 
God, &c. 2) To this follows the beautiful hymn, 
the Magnificat, which deserves a day, a festival, for 
itself, that we may preach upon it and learn to un- 
derstand it. And 3) There is a most beautiful 



saints' days. 73 

example held before us in the Virgin Mary." This 
never got the observance accorded to the other two, 
probably because its doctrinal use is not so evident. 
Daniel thinks it superfluous. The Church Booh 
catalogues the three as minor festivals observed in 
some parts of the Lutheran Church, and retains 
the old pericopes, except for the Visitation, which 
formerly had 2 Sam. 1 : 21 ff. for the Epistle. In 
this change it follows several old Liturgies. They 
are observed in some Lutheran countries, in some are 
abrogated, and in some are transferred to the nearest 
Sunday.* 

St. John Baptist's day, approved by Luther, 
although disliked by some of drier disposition, is 
not only a religious, but also a popular festival in 
Germany, and especially in Skandinavia. It is 
reckoned as a minor festival in the Church Book, 
which, however, assigns it no Introit and Collect. 
Luther preached on John's Martyrdom also on that 
day, and the Wiirtemberg Agenda of 1843 has as- 
signed it two pericopes. 

St. Michael's day, Luther wished to keep, that the 
doctrine concerning angels might be preached upon 
and the congregation be taught to give God thanks 
for their ministry. " On the day of Michael," says 

* " Calvin declared that the feasts of Mary were carriers of Romish 
superstition, but thought they had to be suffered for a while, on 
account of the offense their abrogation would cause. Every trace of 
such days soon disappeared from the domain of the Reformed Church. 
The Kirchenordnung of Frederick, Elector of the Palatinate, 1569, 
which is representative of the German Reformed Church, has not a 
trace of the Year of the Church, in its narrower sense.'' Kliefoth, 
IV. 3,8. 

7 



74 THE CHRISTIAN YEAE, 

Chemnitz, " the Romish fables and superstitions 
concerning the dedication and invocation of Michael 
are refuted ; the doctrine of Scripture concerning the 
office of the angels is taught, and public thanks are 
given for the fruits of the earth received during the 
past year." It was established by the old Liturgies, 
is provided for in the Church Book, and is observed 
in some German countries on the nearest Sunday. 

Luther adorned the days of the Apostles with 
sermons, whence we may conclude, says Daniel, that 
he wished them to be observed by the Church. Their 
observance was defended against the Calvinists, but 
already in the 16th century, they had begun to fall 
into disuse, and in the 18th were almost entirely 
gone, Lusatia being the only Saxon province to keep 
the old custom. Now, says Daniel, so far as I know, 
only the Church of Wiirtemberg has service on the 
morning of these days: the Agenda of 1843 have 
six collects which refer to the Apostles. But, ac- 
cording to Wullen, they get no popular observance ; 
the people are permitted to continue their work ; and 
year-markets are often held at the same time, which 
draw away the congregation and fill the air with the 
noise of cattle and buyers and sellers. " The matter is 
hard to decide/ 7 continues Daniel. u The genius of the 
Lutheran Church requires that the memory of the 
Apostles be kept. The genius of this age struggles 
against nine festivals, which have nearly everywhere 
fallen into oblivion. " The Church Booh has an In- 
troit and Collects for Evangelists', Apostles' and 
Martyrs' days. 



saints' bays. 75 

In reference to the days of the Saints, Luther said, 
" The sufferings of all the saints have this cause and 
finite meaning, that thereby God is honored and 
praised. But Christ died for the people. It is indeed 
well to preach of the sufferings of the saints, but care 
must be taken to treat the Passion of the Lord quite 
differently. It is true, the blood of the saints is 
holy ; but I cannot become holy through it My Lord 
Jesus Christ's sufferings are alone and peculiar, and 
I may rely on them in sin and death , for all our 
confidence and heart hang upon His Passion alone." 
Kliefoth gives the following as the principle of the 
Church : " We should, indeed ; keep the memory of 
the saints, in order to see for our own comfort how 
they also had their weaknesses and sins, but how the 
grace of God was mighty in their weakness, and can 
be mighty in us also, if we lay hold on it in faith ; 
we should regard them, secondly, in order to give 
God thanks that He has given to His humankind 
and Church such men and such gifts ; and lastly, we 
should look upon them as examples of suffering and 
patience, of fidelity and virtue, which we ought to 
imitate. Our fathers in many ways and earnestly 
direct attention to the historical significance of the 
commemoration of the saints, and show how bene- 
ficial and necessary to the living congregation it is, 
in every way, to learn from the history of the lives 
of the fathers in the faith, how and through what 
labor and suffering it has become what it is." The 
liturgies of Halberstadt (1539), and Nordlingen 
(1585), prescribed a special service of thanksgiving 



76 THE CHEISTIAN YEAR. 

for the Gospel on the Sunday after the day of St. 
Ansgar (Feb. 3), the missionary through whom they 
had received it. In the 16th century, All Saints' Day 
was observed in some Lutheran Churches, and the 
Swedish and Danish Churches kept it until 1770. 
Luther wished it to be done away, on account of 
abuses. The Schweinfurth Liturgy (1543) ordained 
the commemoration of St. Elizabeth ; the Nordlingen 
(1538), of St. George ; and many Churches kept the 
days of SS. Nicholas, Lawrence, Martin, and Mary 
Magdalene. If All Saints were kept, thinks Daniel, 
all the rest, except the last, might be given up. We 
have the authority of Christ, Matt. 26 : 13, for keep- 
ing Mary Magdalene's memory alive, and Luther 
thought the admirable story ought to be preached 
upon on a special clay every year, The Church Booh 
mentions the days of no saints, except the Apostles, 
the Virgin, John Baptist and St. Michael. 

Reformation day was celebrated already in the 
16th century, but not always on the same date. The 
Pomeranian Liturgy of 1568 chooses St. Martin's 
day, Nov. 10, in memory of the birth of Luther, and 
because near that time " he began publicly to teach 
against the Papacy." Others chose Trinity Sunday, 
another the Sunday after John Baptist's day, and 
John George of Saxony, in 1667, Oct. 21. In many 
parts of Prussia, it is not kept ; but the fervor of the 
Gustavus-Adolphus Society has revived it upon the 
Sunday after Oct. 31. Kliefoth says nothing was 
known of a Reformation feast of the modern sort 
before the middle of the 17th century. Daniel ob- 



THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 77 

jects that it gives to the Church an appearance of 
newness, which would have been distasteful to Lu- 
ther, and does not contribute to the reconciliation of 
Christendom. It is more and more generally ob- 
served in this country. 

There are in Prussia and other German countries 
Penitential days, observed with peculiar ceremonies 
at different times of the year. In Prussia, they are 
awkwardly fixed between Easter and Ascension, and 
thus interrupt Easter joy, jar with Spring gladness, 
and join with the frequent festivals of that time to 
take the people from their work in the fields.* 
Consequently, they are not generally observed. 

It remains to say that the Lutheran Church has 
dropped the use of Octaves. The Ember days are 
not kept ; but, instead, quarterly examinations in 
the Catechism were introduced. 

C. 

In turning to the Anglican Church, we are at once 
struck by its characteristic uniformity. The refor- 
mation of Romish abuses was gradual. f In Edward 
Vi-'s reign, Parliament forbade the blessing of Can- 
dles and procession on Purification, and left the 
sprinkling of ashes on Ash Wednesday, and the dis- 
tribution of palms on Palm Sunday, free to be done 
or omitted. When James I. came into England, 
the Presbyterians who sought further changes in 

* Daniel. 

t Daniel Codex Liturgicus, III. 296. 
7* 



78 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

the service, petitioned also against the use of the 
Apocrypha and the observance of festivals. The 
common neglect of many festivals which had 
been popular, was one of the results of the Civil 
War and Commonwealth. The general principle of 
the English Church is thus stated in the Introduction 
to the Booh of Common Prayer : " It hath been the 
wisdom of the Church of England, ever since the 
first compiling of her public Liturgy, to keep the 
mean between the tw r o extremes, of too much strict- 
ness in refusing, and of too much easiness in ad- 
mitting, any variation from it.'' Consequently, while 
more than sixty saints' days are retained in the Cal- 
endar, including the translation of the relics of some, 
and the Invention and Exaltation of the Cross,* only 
the following are enjoined : 

* " It will be remarked that in the column of Holy days, the 
names of several Romish saints have been retained in the Calendar. 
No religious observance, however, is attached to these memorials, 
which are preserved with the object, in general, of provoking the 
maintenance of the same faith which was held by the faithful in 
time past, and of the same virtues which they practiced. Some of 
those mentioned, as SS. Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, Cyprian, and 
Martin, the Church at large has always regarded with honor ; and 
others, the Church of England enrols among her Martyrs and Bene- 
factors, as SS. Alban, Gregory the Great, Augustine of Canterbury, 
Dunstan, the Venerable Bede, and Edward the Confessor. Many 
names are merely retained for the purpose of indicating popular 
anniversaries, the commencement of Law Terms, and the ordinary 
periods when rents and other payments come due. The objection, 
therefore, against the keeping of Holy days, founded on the corrupt 
practice of the Church of Rome, whose Calendar is crowded with 
the names of Saints and Martyrs., of which many are fabulous in- 
ventions, and others are those of persons of immoral or questionable 
character canonized for some isolated deed of doubtful piety, no 



THE AMERICAN PRAYER BOOK. 79 

All Sundays of the year, Circumcision, 

The Epiphany, The Conversion of St. Paul,* 

The Purification of the Blessed St. Luke the Evangelist, 

Virgin, St. Simon and St. Jude, Evange- 

St. Matthias the Apostle, lists, 

The Annunciation of the Blessed All Saints, 

Virgin, St. Andrew the Apostle, 

St. Mark the Evangelist, St. Thomas the Apostle, 

St. Philip and St. James, Apostles, The Nativity of our Lord, 
The Ascension, St. Stephen the Martyr, 

St. Barnabas,* St. John the Evangelist, 

Nativity of St. John Baptist, x The Holy Innocents, 
St. Peter the Apostle, Monday and Tuesday in Easter 

St. James the Apostle, week, 

St. Bartholomew the Apostle, Monday and Tuesday in Whitsun 
St. Matthew the Apostle, week. 

St. Michael and all Angels, 

The American Prayer Book enjoins these also, but 
excludes from the Calendar the Saints not mentioned 
in Scripture. Uhden says that of all these, only 
Christmas and Good Friday get general observance. 
The evens before Christmas, Easter, Ascension, 
Pentecost, the Purification, the Annunciation, Apos- 
tles' days and All Saints, are called Vigils, fasts and 
days of abstinence in the English book ; but the 
American makes no mention of them. By the 

longer ayaiis. At the Reformation, all festivals were abolished, 
except those which had been observed from the earliest ages of the 
Church, as tending to the honor of the Gospel, and the further- 
ance of Religion." Rev. W. Trollope, The Liturgy and Ritual, 
p. 64. 

* " In the Calendar of 1552, as well as in the Act of Parliament, 
the names of Paul and Barnabas were omitted ; either because they 
were not in the number of the Twelve Apostles, or perhaps by in- 
advertence, but at the last review the mistake was rectified, and 
proper services were appointed. The feast of St. Mary Magdalene 
was struck out from the second Prayer Book, inasmuch as it is 
doubtful to whom the appellation properly belongs." lb. p. 70. 



80 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR, 

former, the Forty days of Lent, (so-called from a 
word meaning Spring) ; the Ember days, being the 
Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays after First 
Sunday in Lent, Pentecost, Sept. 14 ; (Exaltation of 
the Cross), and Dec. 13, (St. Lucia's day) ; the three 
Rogation days, being the Monday, Tuesday and 
Wednesday before Holy Thursday, or the Ascension 
of our Lord, and all the Fridays in the year, except 
Christmas day, are ordained as fasts. No distinction 
is made between fasting and abstinence. There is no 
special service appointed for the Rogation days. 
The American Book enjoins only Ash Wednesday 
and Good Friday, calling the others u Other days of 
fasting, on which the Church requires such a degree 
of Abstinence as is more especially suited to the 
ordinary Acts and Exercises of Devotion. *' The 
English Prayer Book mentions also the Fifth of 
November, being the day kept in memory of the 
Papists' conspiracy, — the Thirteenth of January, 
being the day kept in memory of the martyrdom of 
King Charles the First, — the Twenty-ninth day of 
May, being the day kept in memory of the Birth 
and Return of King Charles the Second, and the 
Twentieth day of June, being the day which Her 
Majesty began her happy reign, as u Certain Solemn 
days, for which particular services are appointed/' 
These are of course unknown to the American 
Church. 

The Lectio Continua and the Lectio Propria, are 
combined ; the old Gospels and Epistles being re- 
tained with some alterations ; and the Scripture 



TPIE SECTIONS. 81 

being so distributed in the daily Morning and 
Evening Services, that the Psalter is read through 
every month, the New Testament three times a year, 
and the Old once.* Notwithstanding the strong 
objections of the Puritans, the English Church re- 
tains the Apocrypha in the daily lessons ; the Ameri- 
can, however, admits these books only on Holy days. 
In Holy Week the portions of Scripture, which relate 
the Crucifixion of our blessed Saviour, are taken in 
orderly course : St. Matthew's account is read on 
Palm Sunday, in the second lesson, and continued in 
the Gospel ; St. Mark's is read in the Gospels on 
Monday and Tuesday ; St. Luke's, on Wednesday 
and Thursday ; and St. John's, on Good Friday. 
" The Epistle (on Good Friday) shows the insuffi- 

* " The Anglican Church indeed keeps the Church Year in its 
essentials, so far as the Sundays and Festivals are concerned, but 
she h&s at the same time daily Matins and Vespers, and for these 
the Lectio Continua, so that on the First of January, she begins 
with the First of Genesis, the First Psalm, the First of Matthew, 
and the First of Romans, and the New Testament is read through 
every four months, the Psalter every month, and the Old Testament 
once a year. This mechanical lectio continua goes on every week- 
day in the year : only for the Matins and Vespers of the Sundays 
and Festivals, and of Advent, have appropriate passages been 
selected. This is evidently not a better completion of the Church 
Year and its Pericopes. It is rather a restriction of the Church 
Year to the Sundays and Festivals alone ; with the exception of 
Advent, the times and Cycles of the Church Year are destroyed ; 
the Sundays and Festivals with their Pericopes stand alone, and 
the week-day services take their own course ; the latter are not put 
into organic connection with the Sunday Services, and thereby 
with the Church Year, which could have been accomplished only 
by the choice of appropriate lections. It is only an external com- 
bination of the lectio continua with the Pericopes, to the prejudice 
of these." Kliefoth, IV. 375, 376. 



82 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

ciency of Jewish Sacrifices, and urges that they typified 
the one oblation of the Saviour, who made full atone- 
ment for the sins of the whole world. The Collects 
contain expressions of boundless charity, praying 
that the effects of His death may be as universal as 
the design of it. The proper Psalms were all com- 
posed for times of great distress, and most of them 
belong mystically to the sufferings of our Saviour ; 
especially the 22d, of which several passages were 
literally fulfilled by the events of the Crucifixion. 
The first morning lesson relates Abrahams readiness 
to offer up his son Isaac, which has always been re- 
garded as a type of the sacrifice of the Son of God ; 
and the first Evening lesson contains the clearest 
prophecy of that sacrifice."* Easter is distinguished 
from other festivals by special additions to the 
service. 

III. 

The Value of the Christian Year. 

In keeping the Church Year, we agree with the An- 
cient Church. The great feasts date from the earliest 
ages, new feasts were the natural outcome of Christ- 
ian life ; and the Year of the Church — in its narrower 
sense — commemorates the history of which the Church 
of to-day is the product. 

The Church Year, no more than the Christian faith, 
is the creation of a few men or of any age. It is 
founded on God's Word, like the Creeds. It is not 
only the record of human faith and experience, — en- 

* Procter on the Booh of Common Prayer, p. 281. 



DEFENSE OF THE CHURCH YEAR. 83 

titled to the reverence a Protestant feels for a Gothic 
Cathedral, which, wonderful as it is, is yet too vast 
for a preacher's voice ; but it is a living development of 
Christianity. Though different in every age, it has 
always answered to cotemporaneous faith and aspi- 
ration, and it is yet instinct with life and growing. 

If the words of our Lord be true, in holding His 
Truth,* we also hold the faith of the Church. 
The Church Year has been at once an inspiration, 
an expression, and a product of that consensus. If 
there have been wrong feasts and fasts, there have 
been mistaken, selfish and imperfect doctrines ; both 
Creeds and w r orship must be corrected by the Word 
of God; but the criticism which is sufficient against 
wrong feasts and days, does not touch the Church 
Year itself, its Great Feasts, and its principle. 

It is not enough to say that these days have 
come down to us through Popery. The fault of 
Rome is in her wrong principle and practice, in the 
abuse of the Church Year. We need not give up 
the Festivals because they come to us through the 
Mediaeval Church, any more than we give up the 
Word and Sacraments. That is a fallacious unity 
which some seek in the alliance of all Protestants 
against Rome. The true Christian union is of all 
believers, whether they be Eastern, Roman or Prot- 
estant Christians ; and for this we pray and hope. 
How can we pray for this, and yet give up the few 
links between us and them, which yet remain in our 
worship ? And how thrilling that in this or that 

Matt. 16 : IS. 



84 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

usage, we agree with the Apostles themselves, and 
with the Saints ! 

Through the order of the Christian Year, Christ 
puts forth upon us the same influence He exercised 
in Judea and Galilee. He came to show the mercy 
of God and to make reunion between Him and us 
possible, to open men's eyes at the same time to their 
own unworthiness and God's mercy, and to make 
them confide in this. How did He influence them ? 
By a magical, mysterious, irresistible operation on 
their will ? That cannot be, for we see that He 
failed to convince and convert some. He would have 
been glad if the Pharisees and Chief Priests had 
come to Him as the Publicans did ; but He could 
only embitter them. Judas was with Him perhaps 
as long as Matthew and Thomas, but became a most 
unchristlike traitor. Unless there was a hidden 
something in His intercourse, the failure to publish 
which has vitiated all the labor of the Church, He 
merely went among men, talked with them, preached 
the Truth of God, and in a quiet way showed what 
He was, and w r hat He had to give them. 

Pie has the same end in revealing Himself to this 
generation. He is the same Christ, and in His Word 
appeals to us in the same manner. We hold the 
same relation towards Him those men did, or we 
cannot be judged with them if we reject Him. Either 
He influences us in the same way, either He means 
to attract and renew us by the same companionship, 
rebuke and revelation, or their responsibility was not 
like ours, and we have no direct interest in the Bible, 



THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST. 85 

which becomes only the record of what He was to 
them. On the other hand, we have His express de- 
claration that the Holy Ghost, whose mission it is to 
comfort, maintain, gather and guide the Church, will 
take of His and show unto us, will bring to mind 
His words and deeds ; that is, we, though far remote 
in time and place, are to hear the same Saviour, and 
see the same miracles. But His words and deeds 
cluster around His Incarnation, Manifestation, Hu- 
miliation, Death, Resurrection and Ascension, and 
get their character from them. If these events be 
shown, proved and explained, so that we understand 
them, we comprehend all else He brought and told. 
These are the dogmas, the doctrine, the Creed of the 
Church. We will not quarrel about their meaning, 
but, if w 7 e be really Christians, we will resist any 
attempt to explain them away. Believe that He 
our God, w r as born truly a man at Bethlehem, and 
went about doing good with supernatural power, and 
more than human meekness and pity, and voluntarily 
underwent great sorrow, desertion and death, but rose 
again and ascended into Heaven, whence He poured 
the Holy Spirit upon His disciples, and you will 
believe all else essential, for the truths of God's word 
are pervaded by a common life, and are an organism. 
Perceiving this, infidelity has attacked these very 
facts, and seeks to undermine our literal faith in 
them ; and all heresies, half- faiths, defective prac- 
tices, and war against the Creeds will be found to 
result from an uncertainty about, or an unwillingness 
to accept, these sublime, inexplicable facts simply as. 
they stand. 
S 



86 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

Inspired like the Prophets ; who knew not what 
the Holy Ghost meant while He spake through 
them, the Church, by the arrangement of the great 
Feasts of the year, has made sure that all these facts 
will be impressed upon us annually. Jesus slowly 
goes among us. We behold the Babe in the manger ; 
we see Him in the Temple, obedient to the Law ; 
we follow Him in His gradual manifestation of 
fellow-feeling, wisdom, power and majesty until the 
Transfiguration ; we watch while He overcomes the 
Tempter ; we see the successive steps of his humilia- 
tion until death ; are with Mary and John at the 
foot of the Cross, with the disciples and the Mag- 
dalen at the empty tomb, and at last, having stood 
w T ith them gazing up into Heaven, receive with the 
whole little Church the gift of the Holy Ghost. 
Now an arrangement by which it is made sure, that 
so full a consideration of all the principal events of 
His life shall be had every year, (for the feasts are 
to the other clays of service like the vowels, without 
which the consonants cannot be uttered), is certainly 
more edifying than a full and impressive sketch of 
His life in one Sermon, or the chance and broken 
references of preachers, who are bound by no regu- 
lations. It supplies the material of Christian faith, 
the knowledge which is the only right basis of 
Christian energy and love. 

It is not right that all worship and all means of 
edification should be at the mercy of the preachers. 
Even though some might be able to choose more 
appropriate lessons than those which are set, all have 



DEFENSE OF THE CHURCH YEAR. 87 

not equal learning, experience and judgment ; and 
many fall so far below the average that their freedom 
would be detrimental to the Congregation. There 
ought to be something fixed in the service, something 
independent of and above the preacher, that it might 
testify to the congregation that they hear not the 
faith or opinions or guesses of a man, but the very 
words of God, present among them. 

The order of the feasts, as we have said, will insure 
a complete presentation of the Truth ; the services of 
the Church will gain interest from their variety ; the 
distinct lesson of every Sunday forbids an unhealthy 
subjectivism, while its Gospel furnishes a Divine fact 
for our meditation, and the Epistle leads to whole- 
some, because trustful, introspection ; and it is of 
great benefit that the people know beforehand what 
the lesson of the Sunday will be.* 

To the objection that festivals make the people 
idle and spoil them, we may reply that this could be 
properly urged against the Romish abuse of the 
Church Year before the Reformation, but does not 
hold against the proper use of it ; it only serves as 
a caution. It might be answered also that men must 
have holidays, and it is much better if these can at 
the same time be holy days ; — if the selfish and weari- 
some round of workdays can be interrupted, not by 
revelry and license, nor by enervating idleness, but 
by the worship of God, It were perhaps enough 

* Alt shows how the annual recurrence of the same Pericopes 
suggests and assists self-examination by contrasting the present 
self with the self of a year ago. 



88 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 

to ask whether there is any gain in the secularization 
of Christmas, and the disregard of Good Friday. 

Others however object that the lioly times are 
arbitrarily chosen, and that it is not right to cut up 
Scripture into bits. The former objection has no 
real force. The Church Year would be no more 
useful, its observance would not be more obligatory, 
if every day were the correct anniversary of the event 
it commemorates. The latter, we will examine in 
detail. 

It is said tha tthe portions of Scripture which give 
character to the Year, are taken out of their connec- 
tion. Of course, this will not hold against the Peric- 
opes of the Great Feasts. If it be granted that a 
day shall be given to the memory of the Resurrec- 
tion, there can be little dispute about the proper 
Gospel. That story alone should be the Gospel. Of 
the Sunday Pericopes, it is too much to say that they 
are taken out of their connection. In not one is the 
doctrine obscured ; I can remember but one Gospel, 
which seems to group together as a whole what it is 
clear our Lord said at several times, and often the 
happiest and most suggestive correspondence will be 
found between the Gospel and Epistle, and often the 
Introit and Collect, of a Sunday. 

There is, besides, a more or less obvious connec- 
tion between the successive Pericopes. *We have 
already shown this in the Epiphany and Lenten 
series. It is no less evident in the Gospels and 
Epistles of the Sundays, after Easter, which, until 
Whitsunday, are all taken from the Gospel of John 



THE PERICOPES. 89 

and the Catholic Epistles. Many authors have 
traced the thread running through the Pericopes of 
the Trinity Sundays.* 

Neither preacher nor people are cut off from any 
part of Scripture by the Church Year. The parts 
of God's Word not appointed for Sundays, are left to 
the week-days. The proper observance of the Church 
Year requires week-day services too ; and only de- 
mands that the lections shall be so chosen as to accord 
with the lessons of the time. The older order in the 
Lutheran Church provided for these.f 

It may be said that the Pericopes have not been 
chosen with the best judgment, or that they have a 
flavor of Papistry. Luther thought there were not 
enough, which speak of the righteousness of faith, 
but too many which spoke of the value of good 
works. He did not change them however ; and no 
attempt that has been made, has been quite success- 
ful. J It is felt that to change the whole series of 
Pericopes would be to destroy the Church Year, and 
the same objection will lie against alternate series. 
All the Churches, however, have omitted some of 

* Nebe, Alt, Lisco, for instance. 

f The Pomeranian Agenda appointed for the week-days of the 
first week in Advent, (in the cities), the prophecies of the Coming 
Messiah, Gen. 3, 12,26, 28, 49; Num. 24; Deut. 18; 2 Sam. 7; 
Is. 7, 61 ; Jer. 23 ; Hag. 1 ; for the second week, our Lord's sayings 
about the Last Day, Matt. 24, 25 ; for the last week, Is. 35, 61, 40 ; 
Mai. 3, 4. But for the villages in the first week, Matt. 24, 25 ; in 
the second, Gen. 3, 12, 26, 28, 49 ; Num. 24 ; Deut. 18 ; in the third, 
2 Sam. 7 ; Is. 7, 9, 39, 61 ; Jer. 23 ; Hag. 1 ; Is. 40: Mai. 3, 4.— 
gliefoth, IV. 404/. 

J Nebe gives the series projected by Nitzsch ; Alt those also of 
Suckow and Lisco. 

8* 



90 THE CHRISTIAN YEAH. 

the old Pericopes, or adopted new ones, without in- 
jury to the series as a whole. 

But, it may be asked, does not the whole Bible 
belong to every Christian ; is not each responsible 
for his own faith, and therefore bound to search every 
part of Scripture ; and is it not so plain that the way- 
faring man, though a fool, shall not err therein ? This 
would seem to be the Protestant principle. Never- 
theless the Church Service is not the place for Bibli- 
cal Criticism, for the painful, doubtful, wavering 
construction of a Creed ; but for the use and joyful 
appropriation of ascertained Truth. 

Does not the Church, however, by the use of the 
Ecclesiastical Year, the Feasts and Pericopes, impose 
a certain conception of Christianity upon its children, 
may be the rejoinder. And I readily answer Yes. 
No one but a believer in a mechanical inspiration 
will hold that texts of Scripture are of any use apart 
from the context, the purpose of God in uttering 
them, or that every word in the Bible, even though 
said by a lying prophet or a peccant Psalmist, is a 
word of God. And if the words and stories of 
Scripture are significant only when their relations 
are understood, much more is it necessary to know 
their relation to the Word, the Divine Son of Man, 
the Heart and Boundary and Life of- all Revelation. 
We are not saved, nor are we regenerated, nor even 
spiritually benefited, by the mere w T ords or sentences 
of the Holy Scriptures, but through Christ alone, 
who lives in them, and reveals Himself by their 
means. No one will pretend that all parts of the 



CONCLUSION. 91 

Bible are of equal value in this regard. Nor are all 
parts equally edifying. From Genesis to Matthew 
we meet only an imperfect revelation and religion. 
Christianity contains all that was Divine in Judaism, 
the Old Testament is a constituent of the New, Christ 
is the Sum of all Revelation, past and possible. 
Though it is necessary to study every part of the 
Bible, in order to know Him, the parts to be read 
in the Church are not those which show the in- 
complete development, but those which contain the 
essence of the whole, the product of Revelation, the 
distinctively Christian portions ; which answer to, 
and feed the devotion of Christian men ; in which 
our Blessed Lord, as really as when with the Twelve, 
meets us and talks with us, to dispel our errors and 
impart His pure and blessed life. All men are not 
capable interpreters of the Bible. The larger number 
properly enough depend upon those called and 
trained and ordained to teach. It is therefore the 
duty of the Church to provide that they be taught 
the mere Truth, not the data from which Truth may 
be gathered, and that they be brought face to 
face and heart to heart with that Living Christ, 
who, through the Holy Ghost in the Holy Scrip- 
tures, is in the Church. This end is best served at 
present by the Church Year and the Pericopes. Till 
better means are offered, we should value these. 
These considerations should have due weight with 
those also, among whom the Church Year has 
fallen into partial or total disuse. 



INDEX. 



Abuses, 51, 53, 83, 87. 

Advent, 27, 36, 41, 50, 57 ff., 89. 

Anglican Church, 41, 69, 77. 

" " -Criticism of, 81. 

Anniversaries of Churches, 18, 28, 52, 70 f. 
Annunciation, (See Feasts of Mary). 
Apocrypha, 78- 
Apostles, 18, 22, 26, 49, 56, 74. 
Apostolic Church, 9 f., 14, 63. 
Armenian Church, 30, 38. 
Ascension, 11, 26, 67 
Ash Wednesday, 25, 45, 77. 
Augsburg Confession, 51, 53 ff., 62. 
Beginning of Church Year, 24 f., 27, 36. 
Candlemas, (See Purification). 
Christmas, 17, 20, 26 ff., 36, 38, 42, 60. 
Church Year, Definition, 9, Origin, 9, Narrower Sense, 56, 

Worth of and Objections to, 82 ff., A Development, 83, 

Necessity of, 86. 
Colours, the Ecclesiastical, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 58, 64, 

66, 61. 
Circumcision, 17, 21, 26, 43, 60. 
Confirmation, 65. 
Corpus Christi, 19, 48, 68. 
Cross Exaltation and Invention of, 16, 19, 28 f. 
Crucifixion, 21. 

Easter, 11 f., 21, 24 ff, 36, 39, 47, 66. 
Ember days, 15 f., 50, 65, 77, 80. 
End of the Church Year, 35, 38, 69 ff. 
Epiphany, 13, 16, 20, 26 f., 36, 42, 44, 46, 61. 

93 



94 INDEX. 

Fasts, 13 ff., 28 f., 62 ff., 80. 

Feasts, Date of, &c., 24, Divisions in the Greek Church, 38, in 

the Roman, 41, What constitutes a, 51, 56, 57. 
Greek Church, 11, 14, 15, 17, 30 ff., 36. 
Heathen Influence, 19, 22, 60. 

Holy Week, (Karivoche, Still, or Great Week), See Lent. 
Jewish Influence, 10 ff. 
John Baptist, 17, 20, 22, 26. 
Lsetare Sunday, 21. 

Lections, 30 ff, 37, 41, 54 f., 58, 73, 80. 
Lent, 13 ff., 24 ff, 45 f., 50, 59, 62 ff, 80, 87, 88 ff 
Lord's Day, 11, 36, 53, 56, 66. 
Luther. 

Lutheran Church, 5, 6, 41, 42) 51 ff. Kirchenordnungen. 61. 
Mary, Feasts of, 17, 18, 28 f., 38, 44, 49, 71 ff. 
Michael, St., 27, 56, 73. 
Natales Episcoporum, 18. 
New Year, (See Circumcision). 
Nicene Rule, 13. 
Octaves, 43, 77. 
Parasceve ( Good Friday) . 
Pascha (Easter). 
Palm Sunday, 24 ff, 46, 65, 77. 
Pentecost, 11 f., 26, 36, 48, 67. 
Pericopes (See Lections). 
Presanctified, Mass of the, 46. 
Presentation, or 
Purification, (See Mary). 
Quadragesima, (See Lent). 
Quatember, (Ember Days), 
Quartodeciman Controversy, 12 f. 
Quinquagesima, 13, 24 ff, 48. 
Reformation, 19, 76. 
Reformed Church, 56, 58, 73. 
Rogation Days, 18, 25, 48, 66, 77, 80. 
Roman Church, 13 f., 15, 41, 67, 69. 

" " Criticism of, 50. 

Sabbath, 10, 56. 



INDEX. 95 

Saints' Days, (Martyrs), 17, 18, 19, 20, 26 ff., 36, 38, 39, 43, 49, 

51,52,54,56, 73, 75 ff., 78. 
Septuagesima Sunday, 14, 25, 44. 
Sunday, (See Lord's Day). 

Sundays after Trinity, (after Pentecost,) 22, 27, 67 ff. 
Tempora Clausa, (Closed Times,) 50, 58 f., 64. 
Tenebrse, 47. 

Trinity Sunday, 19, 27, 67. 
Vestments, 54, (See Colours). > 
Vigils, 24, 27, 42, 44, 47, 60, 79, 
Western Church, 39 f. 
Whitsunday, (See Pentecost). 



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